The Struggle For Education 1870 -1970, by The National Union Of Teachers.

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The Struggle for Education

A pictorial history of popular education
and the National Union of Teachers

until 1918
, Education Correspondent, The Guardian

‘8 to 1970
, Education Correspondent, The Times

from 1870 until 1945

The Seven General Secretaries
of the N U T

1 William Lawson 1870-73
2 T. E. Heller 1873-91

3 Sir James Yoxall 1892-1926

5 Sir Frederick Ma

6 Sir Ronald ¢

The Union’s Presidents

1874 H.}. Moore 1875 J.E}. Devonshire

1872 W.Osborn

1870 J.J.Graves

1877 W. Gardner

1884 R. Greenwood

1885 and 1889 R. Wild

: a

1894 SirErnest Gray

1893 C. Bowden

1896 Rr.Hon.T_J.

Macnamara

———

1899 T.Clancey 1901 J.F. Blacker 1902 AllenCroft

1906 TP. Sykes 1907 A.R. Pickles 1908 W.A.Nicholls 1909 C.W. Hole 1910 M.Jackman 1911 Miss I. Cleghorn 1912 W.D. Bentliff

PX ps

Reiaend 1915 1916 C.W.Crook 197 Ald T.H.J. 1918 Miss E.R.Conway 1919 W.P. Folland 1920 Miss J.F. Wood

1913 A.W. Dakers

Steer nderdown

U

1924 M.Conway 1925 C.T. Wing 1926 F. Barraclough 1927 SirFrederick
Mander

care \ yg ee, &
1930 Dame Leah 193: Angus Roberts 1932 A.E.Henshail
Manning

1934 H.Humphrey

Lae N \
1935 J.W.H. Brown 1936 DanEdwards

1939 1940 and 1941 1942 W. Griffith 1943 SirRonald Gould
G. Chipperfield

a

1945 Miss I. Haswell 1948 W.J. Rodda

1955 H.J.Nursey 1956 E.L. Britton 1957 J. Archbold

F

1951 A.GranvillePrior 1952 C.A. Roberts

19§8 E.S.Owen 1959 Miss A.F. Cooke 1960 S.W.Exworthy 1961 G.A.Chappell 1963 H.Dawson 1964 Dame Muriel

Stewart

1965 E.Homer 1966 O. Whitfield 1967 D.G. Gilbert ig. Dr W.Emrys 1969 C.B.Jahnson 1970 C.W. Elliot
. avies

2a hundred years

1965
f Parliament created locally elected school boards to build LEAs were asked by the government to submit schemes for
ntary schools. comprchensive secondary schooling.
ational Union of Elementary Teachers was born. ae
‘ 7 .
The Plowden Report welcomed modern developments in primary
tary education was made compulsory for all children. teaching and called for a better deal for underprivileged areas.
1969
Union changed its name to the National Union of Teachers. The Union launched its biggest ever campaign to achieve decent

salaries for teachers.

Free Education Act allowed most children to receive a free
entary education.

he minimum school-leaving age was raised to 12.

02
ct replaced the boards by local authorities, who were allowed to
econdary schools and training colleges.

ondary schools supported with public money had to provide
1 of their places free to scholarship winners.

Gr eat War 1914-1918
chool leaving age was raised to 14.

mbined with the local authorities in the formation of
ommittce to decide on a national salary scale.

sport endorsed a transfer age of 11 between the
secondary stages and initiated the reorganisation of
? schools into junior and secondary schools.

report on primary schools encouraged the
1 teaching methods.

l leaving age to 15 and enabled every
mn i mmiar, secondary

Introduction
by Sir Ronald Gould

The National Union of Elementary Teachers was established
in 1870, though the word ‘Elementary’ was soon to be dropped
from its title. The opposition of the weak, disorganised and
fragmented teaching profession to the Revised Codes (that is,
Payment by Results) had proved futile, and thus teachers
were at last persuaded to join together into a national organisa-
tion to make opposition more effective.

In the same year the first really important Education Act
reached the Statute Book. Unfortunately, though it marked an
advance in thinking at that ume in that it ensured a limited
education for all, it reflected a now out-moded class-con-
sciousness about education, and embodied a compromise
about Church control of education far from acceptable to large
numbers of people. Some wanted full church control; some
full public control. Yet the Act created a system of dual-
control in which ‘Board schools’ were wholly maintained, and
‘non-provided’, or church schools, partially maintained by the
public, and this compromise solution which was necessary if
educational advance was to be made, caused bitter controversy
until quite recently.

Robert Lowe, not the most-loved figure by teachers of the
day, characterised the situation rather well when he said in his
speech on the Third Reading of the 1867 Reform Bill:

‘I was opposed to centralisation; I am ready to accept centralisation;
I was opposed to an education rate, I am now ready to accept it...
The question is no longer a religious question, it has become a
political one... You have placed the government in the hands of
the masses, and you must therefore give them education’.

But the realisation that elementary education was an essential
basis for a modern industrial state, the agitation against the
Revised Codes which involved ‘payment by results’ and
distorted methods and curricula, made reform imperative,
despite the opposition of the cost-conscious and some church
interests. J. J. Graves, the Union’s first President, succinctly
expressed the Union’s position during those turbulent times in
his opening speech to Conference:

‘We inaugurate in founding this “National Union of Elementary
Teachers” no aggressive association. We desire to assail nobody.
We do desire to think and act as reasonable and educated men, to
advocate improvements in our educational schemes and machinery,
to look after the welfare of the nation as far as elementary education
affects it, and at the same time try to advance our own interests,
convinced that by the elevation of the teacher, we elevate the value
of education, and accelerate the progress of civilisation’.

This general declaration of the ‘faith’ of the Union was expressed
in nine practical aims:

1. Control of entrance to the profession and teachers’ regis-
tration

The recruitment of teachers to the inspectorate

The gaining of the right of appeal

Superannuation

The revision of the educational code

The gaining of security of tenure

. Freedom from compulsory extraneous duties

. Adequate salaries

SW AWRY Y

—

g. Freedom from ‘obnoxious interference’.
Over the years the Union has achieved in the main all these aims
except the first and the eighth, and new aims, inspired by the
spirit of J. J. Graves’ Presidential Address, have been formu-
lated.

T have stressed this early history of the Union as it is germane
to understanding the Union position on all the major issues of
the past one hundred years. The nine aims illustrate clearly
the Union’s determination to view its professional and
educational objectives as being of equal import. Ever since,
the leadership of the Union has always been totally convinced
that their vision of a desirable educational system could not
in any way be at variance with the well-being of teachers
within that system. For them, there was, and could be, no
dichotomy between the interests of education and the interests
of the teachers.

At all times during the past 100 years the Union has rightly
been ahead of its time. As mentioned earlier, the Union soon
dropped ‘Elementary’ from its name, and accordingly its
membership were the first to reject the notions that secondary
and elementary teachers and elementary and secondary children
differed so much in kind that they needed to be segregated into
completely separate organisations. However, it was not until
1944 that the law enacted that all children should receive both
primary and secondary education and that the concept that
elementary education alone was good enough for the working
classes began to wither and die. But, alas, despite the constant
advocacy of the NUT, teachers generally have not yet realised
the need for professional unity to match the unity of the
education service. They are fragmented in separate organis-
ations and enjoy less power than they should, to the distress
of the far-sighted, the confusion of the public, and the amaze-
ment of teachers from emergent countries.

The Acts of 1870 and 1902, however, created a unified central
department of education from three competing departments;
and education was grafted into a local government structure
that was never designed to support it.

Throughout the period 1902 to 1944 the Union resisted ‘the
further encroachment of the Churches into school territory’.
During the Great Depression that in Britain embraced almost
the whole of the ‘20s and 30s’, the Union effectively fought
governments, economists and much of the press, in order to
keep the educational system intact. There were, however,
appalling set-backs: the failure to raise the school leaving age
to 15 because the churches claimed that inadequate grants
prevented them from reorganising their schools; teacher unem-
ployment, savagely-cut building programmes and a 10 per
cent cut in teachers’ salaries, which was not fully restored until
four years had elapsed.

The success of the Union in its campaign against economic
and church interests in the two decades before the Seco
World War placed the Union in a strong position for
complicated negotiations that were to take place befo
1943 Bill finally reached the Statute Book. Indeed

the substance of the Bill had been advocated by the NUT ina
booklet published during the preliminary discussion. The
Act’s great achievement was the introduction of three stages
of education, primary, secondary and further (including
higher), which had been an ideal near to the heart of the
Union for many years. The religious settlement, whilst far
from being all that the Union wanted (and, indeed, far from
what the churches desired), had one great merit; it enabled
education to advance free or largely free from sectarian strife.
Never since has it been necessary for me to say, as did my
predecessor, Sir Frederick Mander: ‘The dual system lies like
a tank trap across the highway of educational advance’.

The 1944 Act has proved to be one of the great landmarks in
educational legislation. It has been a springboard to educa-
tional opportunities unforeseen even when the Act was passed.
Free universal secondary education and grant-aided higher
and further education has produced a social and geographic
mobility that is revolutionising society, socially, politically
and economically.

But even this great Act which Mr Butler, the Minister
mainly responsible for the Act, described at the time as a
synthesis rather than a compromise—

A synthesis between order and liberty, between local initiative and
national direction, between the voluntary agencies and the State,
between the private life of a school and the public life of the district
which it serves, between manual and intellectual skill and between
those better and less well endowed,

has now ceased to be a clarion call to education advance.

The teachers were soon to realise that the philosophy of
‘age, aptitude and ability’, accompanied by selection at 11 and
the tripartite system, were really not appropriate to the needs
and demands of the nation’s children in the new technological
society. The comprehensive school is both a product of, and a
herald of, a different concept of individuals and of society. The
teachers in their new comprehensives, bilaterals and secondary
moderns refused to accept the philosophy of tripartism and
as a result of their foresight and enthusiasm secondary education
developed at such a pace that by 1960 over 30 per cent of the
school children taking GCE ‘O’ level were outside the grammar
school system. More than anything else, the confidence and
far-sightedness of the innovating teachers of the 50s and 60s,
together with heightened pupil and parental aspiration, and
the publicising of all this by the NUT and others, have created
the demand for a new Act.

On the professional side, the introduction of the basic
scale, and eventually the establishment of equal pay for women
in 1961, should have created far greater unity in the teaching
profession. The continued existence of inadequate salaries,
however, connived at and encouraged by the central Govern-
ment, has resulted in these considerable achievements being
unnoticed and unsung.

The main outstanding professional issue, other than salaries,
remains a Teachers’ General Council; a desire and an aspiration
of teachers for over one hundred years. At last another
round of negotiations is well under way and with general good
will the Teachers’ General Council could be established in
1970.

The stage is set for a major new Education Act in the
early 1970’s. Internal committees of the Union have been as
thorough in preparing evidence on the expected new legislation
and the reform of the structure of local government as were

their predecessors in the early 40s. A major new Education
- will no doubt be placed on the Statute Book, but all the

indications are that its birth will be difficult and its early child-
hood fraught with strife.

Once again, as in 1870, 1902 and 1918, there are forces of
privilege and influence in society which would deny further
educational advance and would denigrate those who desire
such advance. There are many from all walks of life who
yearn for yester-year, or, failing that, cling to the status quo
as the most acceptable alternative. For them superior education
for the select few, formal lessons with chalk, talk and books,
and children and teachers who ‘know their place’ is their vision
of the New Jerusalem.

There exists, too, another group of false prophets — the
economists of the 30s, returned in a new guise as the purveyors
of the new religion, cost-benefit analysis. Many (though
fortunately not all) know much about price and nothing of
value, and advocate policies which would undermine and
destroy the character and the essence of the emerging educa-
tional system.

What in fact is happening is that our contemporary society
is witnessing upheavals similar to those to which this book bears
witness. The advent of universal secondary education has
produced unexpected changes, just as the advent of universal
primary education did years ago. The necessary social,
intellectual and economic adjustments are causing controversy.
The consequence of universal secondary education is an insis-
tent demand for more and more higher education, the most
costly of all forms of education, and unfortunately, here as
elsewhere, achievement limps behind aspiration.

These are the challenges that many cannot and will not face.
If the last hundred years are any indication, then the Union
and its members will once again be advocating a pincer advance
on the educational and professional fronts. No doubt once
again the Union will be opposed and berated; the insults of
the past will be revived; ‘a Frankenstein monster which has
suddenly grown to full life’, or ‘an unscrupulous organisation
only interested in its own benefits’, or ‘the illegitimate offspring

. of the NUT’.

Be that as it may, the Union will continue to act as our
predecessors did, adhering firmly to J. J. Graves’ century-old
declaration of faith, but using to greater effect our increased

resources to grapple with new problems and to define new
objectives.

a

State education begins
and the National Union
of Teachers is born

‘Our purpose in this Bill is to bring elementary education within the
reach of every English home; aye, and within the reach of those children
who have no homes.’ In these words, W. E. Forster introduced his
measure in February 1870. The schooling provided under the Act was
neither free nor fully compulsory, and it was aptly named elementary.
Still, it was an important step.

In 1870, too, separate teachers’ organisations came together to form
the National Union of Teachers. During the next 30 years the Union
worked to raise their own status and widen the scope of elementary

; Dudley Heath's drawing of a schoolboy ata
education. Board school, ragged but literate

PRESS

12

Rote learning
and Victorian charity

Before 1870, elementary education for working-class children was a
patchwork affair provided by private bodies, principally religious. But
from 1833 parliament made grants to them and inevitably began to tell
them how to spend the money. In 1839, the Committee of Council for
Education was created, with Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth as secretary.

It was an inspired appointment. He created the inspectorate, then in
1846 the famous Minutes gave official form to the pupil-teacher system.
Intelligent (and moral) elementary pupils were apprenticed as pupil-
teachers and the best of them sent to training college, at government
expense. As teachers they received an augmentation grant and retiring
pension. Teachers began to feel themselves a profession.

But soon taxpayers were complaining about heavy expenditure on
education — a recurring theme in the history of education. The 1861
Revised Code which aimed at ‘cheap and efficient’ education cut direct
payments to teachers, reversing the trend towards civil service status.
The impetus towards extending elementary education was overwhelming,

however, and in 1868 the new Liberal government pledged itself to
introduce a Bill.

its

“aOR

1. A Church of England
parish of Kingham in Oxford
was demolished in 1910.

hoo! which served the

jire. This building

4d

eT

eave

Uf? ta7,

pee

it

The 3 Rs for the lawer classes

2. A Quaker school under John Bunyan's
meeting house.

3. A school in Borough Road in the East End of
London run by the British and Foreign School
Society, a Nonconfarmist body. It was directed
on the monitorial principle, with a single master
teaching very large numbers through senior
pupils. The toys seen hanging on the rafters
could be won by getting good marks.

4. George Cruikshank in 1839 reflects the
general image of teachers — not without reason,
for many were men who had failed at other
trades. As their calibre and training improved,
they were then criticised for being
‘over-educated' and ‘aping their betters.'

5. Quite apart from religious and charitable
schools, ‘dame’ or common schools were
operated by the private enterprise of people
who were often barely literate.

6. Only about 40 per cent of the population
could read.

1. Since most schools charged fees, the only
educational opportunities open to the really
poor were ‘ragged schools’, like this one in
Clare Market in 1869. It would have been a
brilliant teacher who could give even a
smattering of education to these starving
children.

Classics for the upper classes

2, The schoolroom at Winchester. Local
grammar schools still admitted free scholars, but
Winchester and the other public schools had
become the prerogative of the rich. Conditions
were often chaotic and the education rigidly
classical. Private academies could bea

‘better buy’ for the well-to-do.

3. An Eton boy on his first day at college.

‘You have placed the government
in the hands of the masses; you

must therefore give them education’

Robert Lowe, as Vice-President of the Committee of Council, had in 1861
succeeded in retarding the growth of elementary education through the
Revised Code. But as this quotation from his speech in the debate on
Disraeli’s 1867 Reform Bill shows, he was quick to appreciate the
implications of extending the franchise to the urban working-class. The
new voters promptly put the Liberals in power.

4. Employers were beginning to realise than an
educated work-force was necessary both in
factories to operate the sophisticated machinery
and in offices as clerks.

5. In Sheffield, the Radical A. J. Mundella
replaced the moderate J. A. Roebuck as
Liberal candidate. An ‘advanced’ educationist,
Mundella took a Jeading part in the discussions
leading up to the 1870 Act and in 1880 became
Vice-President in charge of the Education
Department. In the cartoon, the workmen are
telling Roebuck that ‘Mundella is the man of
our choice’.

6. In spite of poor schooling, the desire for
literacy was great. Workers from the cotton-
mills using the free reading-room in Manchester
library. From 1850, local authorities were allowed
to finance public libraries.

Prejudice and religious faction

hold up reform

1. The first half of the 19th century saw the
hardening of religious differences between the
Church of England, influenced by the Oxford
movement, and the Nonconformists. Arguments
about religious education delayed the
introduction of a bill to reform education.

2. To many it seemed wrong to force children
to go to school. Similar attitudes are to be
found today among those who oppose the
ralsing of the school leaving age.

3. Joseph Chamberlain, who with A. Jd.
Mundella and Charles Dilke, led the National
Education League, one of the two main pressure
groups influencing the contents of the Bill.

6c tepy aia hk on RD)
OBSTRUCTIN Es.

Ma Posee Ye Mou 41) “YKS, IT'S ALL VEKY WELL Tu BaY, 'GO TO SCHOOL'’ WOW AIL TURY 10 GU TU SCHUUL WHEE THOSE PROPLE

QUAKNELLING IN THE DOORWAY? WHY DUNT YOU MAKE EM “MOVE ON?"

4and5. The Vice-President of the Committee
of Council, W. E. Forster, as Spy saw him in
1869; and as a grateful nation commemorated
him in a statue on the Victoria Embankment.

6. The National Education League, with a
Radical platform of free, unsectarian and
compulsory education supported by rates, was
opposed by the National Education Union, who
wanted to build on the existing denominational
system. Lobbying was a more formal affair in
those days, as this ///ustrated London News
picture shows. Gladstone and Forster publicly
received the Union and the League in turn, as
well as many other interested bodies.

6

==

Education on the rates EO A
and the dual system

Boards in areas where there were not enough voluntary schools, with the
duty of ‘filling the gaps’. The School Boards were allowed to raise a
local rate and to insist on compulsory attendance up to 13 if they |
wished. School fees were not abolished and elementary schools were |
defined as those with fees up to a maximum of 9d a week. Voluntary

schools received a 50 per cent grant from the Education Department but

no more building grants.

|
|
The 1870 Act empowered the Education Department to set up School
|

THE EPUCATION PROBLEM

Ase, WM it, wy
‘ weve UT WILLIAM
Tun PRACTIUNS TU THE Rk

ihe

1 and 2. Forster's main achievement was to find
a compromise settlement for religious education.
Pupils were given the right to withdraw from
religious instruction, even in voluntary schools.
An amendment moved by Cowper-Temple
stated that in schools ‘hereafter established by
means of local rates, na catechism or religious
formulary which is distinctive to any particular
denomination shall be taught.’

W.E. Forster is the subject of both these
cartoons. On the left he is telling the children:
‘Well, my little people, we have been gravely
and earnestly considering whether you may
learn to read. | am happy to tell you that subject
to a variety of restrictions, conscience clauses,
and the consent of your vestries—YOU MAY!"

The teachers
unite

3. Severa! elementary teachers’ organisations,
mainly based on denominational groupings, had
found a common basis for action over the Bill.
In June 1870, at King's College, London, the
National Union of Elementary Teachers was
founded. ‘Elementary’ was dropped from the
title in 1888, for by that time membership and
activities had widened considerably. By 1873
when this picture was taken at the annual
conference at Bristol, membership was 6,880.
The Union on the whole approved the terms
of the Bill. By training and outlook they were in
favour of religious education and weicomed the
Survival of the voluntary schools. But they
feared that the need for more teachers might
lead to ‘dilution’ and, even at this early date,
Saw the Act as only the first step towards
free and universal education from elementary
8choo! to university.

The 1870 Act is passed
and the Union is founded

The National Union of Elementary Teachers,
founded at a meeting at King’s College,
London on June 25, 1870, was the product of
a defeat. It was born of an awareness by
certificated teachers — a smal] select minority
of the teaching force at that time, but
recognised by Matthew Arnold and others to
be some of the best qualified teachers in
Europe - that only by combining the local
groups of denominational and other teachers
could they exert their due influence on the
direction of educational] affairs. For in 1861,
crashing down on the evolving prestige of the
certificated teachers, had come the reactionary,
economical, disastrous promulgation of the
Revised Code and the system of ‘payment by
results’. All the
teachers in 1870 — that the Government could
alter the standard of their certificate at will,
that the Government had gone back on its
promise of 1846 to set up a pension system,
that the views of the professionals had carried
little weight in the preparation of the new
Education Act of 1870- can only be under-
stood against an overwhelming feeling of
anger and betrayal in the 60s.

the other grievances of

What was the condition of the schools,
of education and of teachers in the era prior
to 1870? This of course was the blooming
period of the Victorian age, a period of a
largely unreformed franchise which kept the
vote from the working classes, of the triumph
of ideas of liberal economy, of fearful
exploitation and long working hours in
industrial areas, of burgeoning confidence in
the middle classes, of the ‘progressive’
notions of Albert, the Prince Consort. All
the cross-winds in the most advanced indus-
trial society that the world had yet seen
blew across the schools. Education, as a
social, religious and moral question came to
the fore in the minds of thinking men by the
1860s and 70s in a way that has scarcely been
equalled in the twentieth century.

Prior to 1870 the schools represented an
astonishing picture, ranging at one end from
the dames’ schools and ragged schools that
provided some brief acquaintance with the
three Rs to hungry urchins in the urban areas,
to the joint-stock boarding schools and
reconstructed grammar schools that would
shortly harden into a distinct, exclusive,
self-contained system of secondary education
for the middle classes —- the public schools.
Lying between the extremes were a mass of
elementary schools, nearly all the property
of the churches, in which some steady
improvements were taking place thanks to a
scheme for Government aid and inspection
introduced in 1846. In schools that came
under inspection a grant was paid direct to a
certificated teacher and he for his part was
encouraged to train his brightest pupils as
pupil-teachers, who could then go on for a

two-year certificate course at a
college.

training

But practically none of the schools were
free and in consequence a great many children
never went into them. Those who did were
often erratic in attendance. The ‘Extracts
from the Private Diary of the Master of a
London Ragged School’ published in 1850
and 1851 gives some idea of the children who
came to a difficult school. ‘In decency of
behaviour or in respect for the teacher or in
discipline of any kind, they are totally
unparalleled. No school can possibly be
worse than this, the very appearance of one’s
coat is to them the badge of class and res-
pectability; for although they may not know
the meaning of the word, they know very well,
or at least fecl, that we are the representatives
of beings with whom they have ever con-
sidered themselves at war’. In this school the
teacher’s success — in getting the children to
sing the doxology at the start of the day, for
instance - came because the children ‘have
been frightened into subjection’.

In the elementary schools generally, how-
ever, the system of inspection and pupil-
teachers enabled strides to be made in spite
of the appalling ratio of trained teachers to
pupils, which could be at least 1 : 100. The
system of pupil-teachers, a refinement of the
discredited monitorial system, effectively
broke down the large groups and the pupil-
teachers themselves could be quite efficient
in their teaching role. But the aims of this
education were limited to basic literacy and
arithmetic. The qualifications for candidates
to be pupil-teachers at 13 were laid down in
1846 as follows:

To read with fluency, ease and expression;
to write ina neat hand with correct spelling and
pronunciation, a simple prose narrative slowly
read to them; to write from dictation sums in
the first four rules of arithmetic, simple and
compound; to work them correctly, and to know
the table of weights and measures; to point out
the parts of speech in a simple sentence; to
have an elementary knowledge of geography;
(in schools connected with the Church of
England) they will be required to repeat the
Catechism, and to show that they understand
its meaning and are acquainted with the
outline of Scripture history. (The parochial
clergyman «will assist in this part of the
examination. In other schools the state of
religious knowledge will be certified by the
managers); to teach a junior class to the
satisfaction of the Inspector, girls should also
be able to sew neatly and to knit.

But if education for the working classes
was groping forward in spite of malnutrition,
poor attendance and many other obstacles, a
handful of enterprising, God fearing heads
was simultaneously creating a new concept

of education for the middle classes—a
concept that would influence British ideas
of a secondary education long after the
children of workers were coming forward to
claim it. People like Arnold of Rugby, Pears
of Repton, Thring of Uppingham were
introducing a broader curriculum than the
decadent classicism of the ancient univer-
sities, a new respect for learning, and a new
appreciation of education as_ essentially
concerned with the formation of character,
based on the total control of a child’s environ-
ment that boarding schools permit.

In this innovative era, before the onset of
imperialism and the cult of athleticism, a man
like Edward Thring, a founder of the Head-
masters’ Conference, devised the study system
- small rooms in which boys could study on
their own —and brought over a German to
start music in his school. (He was also
prepared to move the whole school to Wales
after a typhoid outbreak in Uppingham and
would not return until the local authorities
had introduced a new water supply and
sanitary drainage.) Yet the growth of the
public schools often meant a loss to their
localities, and particularly to their poor
children. Many of the public schools were
grammar schools which met the snobbery of
their new clients by excluding the sons of
local tradesmen and by reorganising their
original charitable foundations. (The ‘misuse
of educational endowments’ would be a
battlecry for the trade union movement into
the 20th century.) The HMC sprang into
existence to mount a successful campaign
against the first draft of the Endowed Schools
Bill of 1869, which would have brought
these public schools under the control of a
Government backed council. As it was
actually passed, this Act hastened the process
by which endowed schools became indepen-
dent places for children of the rich.

The 1850s and 1860s were a great period
for inquiries into different parts of Britain’s
inchoate education system. But first came the
1847 inquiry into Welsh education which
had this to say about teachers:

‘No person, really qualified for the office of
schoolmaster by moral character, mental energy,
amiability of temper, and proficiency in all the
elementary branches of education, together with
aptitude in imparting knowledge, will doom
himself to the worst paid labour and almost the
least appreciated office to be met with in the
country. Were even the means of training
schoolmasters as ample as they are defective,
and were the number of men adequately trained
to the work at hand, the generality of schools
would be not one jot the better supplied, for such
training would fit men for employment in
other spheres, where they would realise four or
five times the emolument and enjoy a much
higher social position than they can hope for as ;

schoolmasters in Wales under existing circiwmn-
stances’,

In 1852-3 came reports on Oxford and
Cambridge. The Oxford report remarked in
passing, ‘of existing evils the most obvious
are sensual vice, gambling in its various forms
and extravagant cxpenditure... In the
villages round Oxford... the opportunities
to vice are too abundant...’ In 1861 came
the report of the Duke of Newcastle’s
Commission ‘to inquire into the state of popular
education in England’; The Earl of Claren-
don’s report on nine of the oldest public
schools came in 1864; Lord Taunton's
report on all those schools not covered by
either Newcastle or Clarendon —- mostly
endowed or grammar schools — completed the
series in 1868.

Of these unprecedented scrutinies, which
set a fashion for major public inquirics into
education which runs through to Newsom,
Robbins and Plowden in more recent years,
the one that mattered most for the certificated
teachers was naturally the Newcastle report.
The very establishment of the commission
arose from dissatisfaction with the 1846
arrangements, some of which boded ill for
the certificated teachers whose position had
steadily advanced on this basis. Tropp, in

The School Teachers, identifies at least six
sets of critics: there were those who com-
plained that popular education was not
advancing fast enough, those who complained
that state-aided elementary schools were
enabling poor children to get a_ better
education than the middle classes; those who
complained that the certificated teachers were
‘over educated’ and becoming too ambitious
socially; those nonconformists who wanted to
curb the local educational monopolies of the
Established Church; those who disliked the
centralisation of the Committce of Council on
Education and state interference; and those,
including Gladstone and Bright who had a
strangely modern concern for ‘the growing
burden of the government grant for educa-
tion’.

The Newcastle commission relied con-
siderably on the statistical evidence and views
collected by ten assistant commissioners who
toured the country. But when it came to
writing the report it selected only such
evidence and opinion as would suit its own
prejudices. For broadly the evidence dis-
counted the allegations of ‘over-cducation’ in
the schools, supported the 1846 arrangements,
and only attacked them because there were
still substantial numbers of children and
schools (especially small rural schools) that
had failed to benefit. (Interestingly enough
the commission found that the proportion of
children in school to the whole population
was not much worse in this country than in

oft praised Prussia, where education was
alleged to be compulsory, and it was higher
than in Holland or France.)

Half the assistant commissioners found
evidence of dissatisfaction, particularly among
younger teachers, over their ‘social position’.
This was perhaps inevitable, as essentially
the certificated teachers were able working
class people who were claiming professional

Status in a new, Government subsidised
occupation. But only one assistant com-
sic saw this discontent as in any way

In general the assistant com-
missioners were laudatory of the certificated
teachers as a group, comparing them
favourably with other teachers at the time.
But the one fact that did emerge to discredit
the teachers, on which a large part of the
subsequent reaction was to hinge, was that
the assistant commissioners were almost
unanimous in agreeing that the elements of
instruction were badly taught. Although the
same researchers offered several reasons for
this phenomenon, at lIvast partly absolving
the teachers themselves —- for example shortage
of teachers and truancy among the children
- these were lost sight of.

The Newcastle Report heralded a tremen-

dous educational disaster. One salient passage
ran as follows:
‘The children do not, in fact, receive the kind of
education they require. We have just noticed
the extravagant disproportion between those
who receive some education and those who
receive a sufficient education. We know that
the uninspected schools are in this respect far
below the inspected; but even with regard to
the inspected, we have seen overivhelming
evidence from Her Majesty’s Inspectors, to the
effect that not more than one-fourth of the
children receive a good education. So great a
failure in the teaching demanded the closest
Investigation; and as the result of it we have
been obliged to come to the conclusion that the
instruction given is commonly both too ambitious
and too superficial in its character, that (except
tn the very best schools) it has been too exclusively
adapted to the elder scholars to the neglect of
the younger ones, and that it often omits to
secure @ thorough grounding tn the simplest
but most essential parts of instruction...

This report is a good illustration of the
thesis that reports of this kind are always an
unsteady compromise between the observed
facts, the opinions of the reporters, and the
public demand they are designed to satisfy.
The above declaration is a classic summary of

the conservative, privileged view of British
educational problems, an invisible thread that
links the 1860s with the Black Paper debate
over a century later. Its assumptions are that
there is a particular kind of education
appropriate to working class children, that
younger children and ‘a thorough grounding’
are neglected, and that teachers are conspiring
in an incompetence of monstrous proportions —
a package which has the socially convenient
result of restricting the products of the
education commended to those stations in
life which gentlemen disdain. It is also
cavalier with facts - the ‘overwhelming evi-
dence’ about ‘one-fourth of the children’
derived from the calculation of one HMI,
which he later admitted should have come out
as a half.

But more was at stake in 1861 than just
the current performance of the schools or
teachers. For the Newcastle Report con-
cluded:

‘There is only one way of securing the results,
which is to institute a searching examination by
competent authority of every child in every
school to which grants are to be paid, with the
view of ascertaining whether these indispensable
elements of knowledge are thoroughly acquired,
and to make the prospects and position of the
teacher dependent, to a considerable extent, on

dangerous.

the results of the examination.

On this foundation, in an cven lee
wounding fashion for the teachers, schol ===
and children, Mr Robert Lowe, vice preside
of the Council, was to create the Revis
Code whose system of ‘payment by results
was to endure for more than thirty years.

Speaking to the House of Commons Mr ~
Lowe made the splendid assertion that ‘1
cannot promise the House that this system
will be an economical one and I cannot
promise that it will be an efficient one, but I
can promise that it shall be one or the other.

If it is not cheap it shall be efficient; if it is
not efficient it shall be cheap’. (In fact, after
rising sharply from £150,000 1n 1851 to
£836,920 in 18§9 the Government education
grant had already dropped to £813,441 in
1861, the year before the Revised Code
appeared; it had fallen to £636,806 by 1865.)

In theory the system, which appealed to a
utilitarian age, was a simple device to get
better value for less money. Its proponents
saw other merits too —thar it would make
teachers concentrate on the weaker pupils as
they all had to reach a certain standard
annually before grants could be awarded.
Lowe himself also saw it as a covert method of
aiding secularisation in
avoiding the

schools and
denominational obstructions.
But in the controversy over the Code, which
teachers denounced at once on a variety of
scores, it was clear that class prejudice and
emotional resentments were at work. Teachers
were attacked for their ‘vested interest’ -
particularly dirty words in the vocabulary of
laissez faire economics -— and even Lowe said
that they were only concerned with their
augmentation grants and they had been
raised far above their true position in socicty.

the

Aside from the educational objections to
the Code, the certificated teachers suffered
immediately in themselves. Although, by nine
votes in the Commons, the employment of
certificated teachers by school managers as a
condition for their receipt of a Government
grant was upheld, the teachers fost their
direct payments from Whitehall. In future all
payments were to go to the managers, an
arrangement that naturally increased teachers’
dependence on them and put paid to the
possibility that teachers might become civil
servants, as happened to many of their
European counterparts. Teachers and pupil-
teachers engaged under the 1846 dispensation
complained again and again that Lowe was
breaking the agreement on which they had
been recruited ~ namely, that they would
have £15 to £30 annual augmentation grants,
paid to them direct. At the same time the
prospect of a Government supported pension,
which had been held out ever since 1846,
was now callously withdrawn.

At this point the weakness and divisions of
the fragmented groups of teachers that then
existed gravely hindered the attempts made
to fight the Code. Although the Metropolitan
Church Schoolmasters’ Association and the
London Association of Teachers agreed in
September, 1861 to form a ‘central com-
mittee of schoolmasters’ the Associated Body
of Church Schoolmasters, for example,
preferred to operate on its own. Teachers and
educational journals put up a spirited case.

The London central committee sent a

deputation to Lord Palmerston and got 2416
signatures to a memorial of protest. The
ABCS, whose membership put on a spurt,
got 4519 signatures to its petition to Parlia-
ment. A few concessions were made to the
critics of the Code, but Lowe was substan-
tially victorious. Had the teachers possessed
an effective, representative organisation, the
result might have been somewhat different.
But, in the bleak aftermath of the Code, the
defeated, bitter certificated teachers — the
acknowledged cream of their profession — took
this lesson to heart.

What did ‘payment by results’ mean in the
schools ? It meant the end of any attempt to
teach outside the three Rs, and it ensured
that these basics were taught in the most
mechanical, least flexible manner possible.
Reading, writing and arithmetic were reduced
to six standards, through which children from
the age of six up were expected to advance by
annual examinations. Standard one in reading
was the ability
monosyllables; in writing, the ability to form
capital or small letters from dictation on a
blackboard or slate; in arithmetic, the ability
to form numbers up to 20 from dictation and
to name them, and to add or subtract figures
up to ten. Standard six involved reading and
writing a short ordinary paragraph in a news-
paper, and calculating ‘a sum in practice or
bills of parcels’.

to manage a narrative in

Throughout its early life the National
Union of Elementary Teachers was fighting
against ‘payment by results’, and over the

years some modifications were achieved in

subsequent codes. Among particular
grievances were the ‘music fine’ - for any-
thing taught outside the six standards

represented a loss for the school managers —
and the principle of grouping by age. Brighter
children were held back and dull ones were
coerced in order to reach the required levels.
Endless drilling of young children, liberally
supported by corporal punishment, were
therefore imposed on the schools in those
crucial decades in which cducation in the
United Kingdom was rapidly extending and
secking to become universal. It was an
extraordinary sacrifice of education to a
shortsighted view of finance, converting
working class children into the recalcitrant or
deadened products of schools made into
factories; contemporary forcigners
thought it was odd.

Because of the desperate importance of
satisfying the inspectors—and up to two-
thirds of a school’s grant depended on these
exams — teachers became accomplices in
innumerable tricks and dodges. They would
inform each other of the habits of particular

even

inspectors, convey information to their
children by signs like a card sharper, force
children who could not read to memorise
relevant passages, and avoid taking in those
who were likely to fail to reach the necessary
standards. The humiliation that these things
involved for that minority of teachers who
were qualified, who had been striving to
cultivate a more enlightened view of education
ever since 1846, may be readily imagined.
In 1889, when ‘payment by results’ was on
its deathbed, the union was to summarise
its objections in a memorial to Lord Salisbury,
the Prime Minister, as follows: it had failed
to provide the children with a good education;
it had set up a false gauge of efficiency; it had
necessitated a ‘system of cram which en-
courages mechanical rather than intellectual
methods of teaching’, it had hurt both the
bright and the slow; it had created suspicion
between inspectors, managers and teachers;
it condemned poor schools to continued
inefficiency; and it had forced the same
curriculum on all schools irrespectively.
More telling, perhaps, is the crossexamina-
tion of a woman who had been an assistant
in a poor school. Mr R. Wild, a former
president of the union, quoted from her
evidence to an inquiry by the London
School Board in a lecture he gave at the
annual conference in 1903.
Q. ‘Would there be children in those days in
that infants’ school who, because of the neglect
of their early education, and because of the

fact that they had only just been admitted to

your school, could noi possibly pass standard
one at seven years of age? A. They did. We
made them, they had to. Q. Do you care to
describe to the committee the methods by which
you made them? A. That is the reason I did
not wish to continue in an elementary school.
I could not continue such methods. Q. What
were they? A. Coercion — driving. I used to
keep the children in tll one o'clock nearly
every day - little children who had not enough
to eat, or any wholesome blood in their bodies,
so that their brain could work, day after day -
day after day. And I used to stand over them
until they did read. Q. You ultimately got
them to pass? A. Yes’.

But if the effects of ‘payment by results’
were painfully drawn out: the climate of
hostility to the schools of 1862 gave way
fairly soon to an atmosphere of optimism
which produced both the Forster Education
Act and the birth of the Union in 1870. It is
of course a recurring pattern in English
education that even the blackest reactions
may yield some benefits, and in this case it
may well be that the invention of a weapon
that satisfied prevailing financial orthodoxy

while providing the limited education thought
necessary for poorer children made it safe to
extend such an education throughout the
country. Other factors, such as the widening
of the suffrage by the 1867 Reform Act,
contributed to the feeling that there must be

a change.
While W. E. Forster, a Quaker Radical who
was son-in-law to Thomas Arnold and

brother-in-law to Matthew — hence intimately
connected to some of the most creative
Victorian educators—steered through his
Bill, the teachers were playing a lively part
in the controversies that surrounded it. The
Act provided for elected School Boards to
fill the gaps in the church school network, and
laid down non-denominational religious
teaching in the School Board schools. But it
did not make schools free, nor attendance
compulsory.

In the ferment of debates, with a National
Education League vieing with a National
Education Union, all contestants wanted to
hear the views of teachers and they themselves
realised the advantages of a united voice.
After the letdown in 1862, in which teacher
salaries had suffered, the multiple associations
had come under attack and lost members.
But by 1868 the ABCS, with J. J. Graves —
the first president of the NUET-—as its
general secretary, was gathering new members.
A London Association of Church Teachers
was formed in the same year to assist the
Church of England in its pressure over the
forthcoming Bill and by March, 1870 this
Association, with the Wesleyan and British
Associations, was able to agree a common
policy. The three groups held a conference
with 13 Liberal MPs in April in which they
advised that nonsectarian religious teaching
was practical, but that there should be a
conscience clause for children to opt out.

Throughout 1869 and early 1870 the
associations had been considering schemes of
union and the experience of common action,
combined with the arrival of an Act which
provided a new employer and, hopefully,
a lessening of religious dissensions in the
schools, gave the necessary final push. A
meeting of about a hundred teachers at
King’s College, London gathered on June 25
‘for the purpose of taking steps to bring
about a union among elementary teachers
throughout England’. According to legend a
young man called George Collins made a
crucial speech which ensured that a union
was set up but probably William Lawson, the
first secretary, was the most active figure
behind the scenes. The first officers were
Graves as president, J. Langton vice-
president, J. H. Devonshire as treasurer and
Lawson as secretary. The first topics to
which the union promised to devote itself
would be the revision of the code, the working
of the Education Act, the establishment of 2
pensions scheme, the throwing open of
higher educational offices to elementary
teachers, and the proposal to obtain pro-
fessional status by means of a public register
of duly qualified teachers.

A student being examined before a large

audience at St. Mark's College, Chelsea, soon
after it was opened by the National Society in
1840.

Teachers find new employers
as local control is introduced

The School Boards introduced local democratic control into education
for the first time. Members of the Boards were directly elected by the
ratepayers, so that the teachers became employed by the public they
served. A total of 2,568 School Boards were set up, most of them in
towns. In the 30 years following 1870, elementary education predictably
proved much more expensive than originally envisaged. The voluntary
bodies strained every nerve to keep up with the rate-aided Boards. They
got deeply in debt, while the Boards were increasingly attacked for
extravagance. Opposition to ad hoc education authorities grew.

2

g

1 and 2. Atter 1870 Board schools sprang up all
over the country. Most of them are still in use.
The London Board was regarded as a pioneer in
its architectural designs and Harper Street
School in Lambeth is a good example of the
style. The original building is still going strong
as the Joseph Lancaster Primary School.

3. The Boards found it difficult to build enough
schools fast enough. The Liverpool Board

adopted the modern solution of prefabricated,
movable, buildings.

4 and 5. The system of electing Boards was
surprisingly experimental. They were directly
elected by ratepayers and women not only had
the vote but could be elected; many of them
were. Each voter had as many votes as there
were candidates, so that they could 'plump' for
one candidate. This gave minorities a chance to
gain representation. The emergent Left-wing
bodies of the SDF and ILP tried out their

wings in School Board elections, with some
success. Elections were hard-fought affairs
arousing intense political passions, especially
after 1895 when Lord Salisbury called on
churchmen to ‘capture the School Boards’.
Henry Payne's election address is full of
insights into the work of the Boards. Among
other proposals he wanted teachers to sit on
Boards, which was forbidden by a regulation of
1875.

Deicester School Board LElection,

MONDAY NEXT, December 6th, 1897.

= eo =

Co the- Burgesses of the Borough of Leicester.

LADIES AND. GENTLEMEN,

Having been adopted by the Independent Labour Party as a candidate for the School Board, I
beg respectfully to solitit your Vote and Interest on their behalf. I am not new to Educational Work, having
served.a term of nine months on the Leicester School Board. 1 regard the principal of Labour ‘representation
on all public bodies as a just and legitimate right, therefore I take this opportunity of making the influence of
labour felt and respected on our local School Board; our hope as a nation lies in the correct education of the
children of the workers, and it.is of vital importance that we should, individually and collectively, do our utmost
to secure thé best possible education for them. I am a Trade Unionist of eleven years’ standing ; my whole life
has been spent in the building trade, and as a practical man I should be of great service on the Building
Comnnittee.

Tam in favour of abolishing theological teaching and substituting for it'systematic moral instruction.

Having come in personal contact with the sufferings of our poor, I should urge the Board’ to gndeavour
to obtain the power to give at least one free meal per day to needy children.

I should advocate the appointment, by the Board, of Medical Gentlemen in various districts to examine
children, as required by the Board, and grant Certificates free of expense.

T am in favour of Higher Grade Schools being provided for the advanced scholars, eo that the children of
the poor may have eyual opportunities with those who are better off.

I think that facilities should be given for Lessons in Swimming for both sexes, and that the physical
development of the children should receive attention as well as the intellectual. ;

T should advocate the Board doing its own work direct without the intervention of a contractor, and thus
suve the extortionate sums of money which flow into the pockets of contractors, and that only practical men be
appointed as Clerks of Works.

I am in favour of the enforcement of a penalty for any evasion of the Board’s terms of contract.

Tam in favour of all employees under the Board retaining their citizenship and being free to organise or
to take any public position, providing such does not interfere with their duties.

T am also in favour of Evening ‘Sittings of the Board, in order to give greater facilities to working men to
act as representatives.

Should you honour me with your support, I trust my devotion to my duties as a representative during the
Nest three years will justify the confidence you repose in me.

I remain, yours faithfully,

85, St. Saviour’s Road.

HENRY PAYNE.

PLUMP FOR PAYNB!
15 VOTES. NO CROSSES. |

1. Fears were often expressed that the lower
classes were being educated ‘beyond their
station.’ Jargon changes, but a near modern
equivalent is ‘more means worse’.

2. Boards had quasi-judicial powers to enquire
into non-attendance. Attendance Committees
performed the same function for voluntary
schools in each district.

3. Debate within the school boards was often
highly acrimonious, giving good copy to the
sensational press of the day. Here The Day's
Doings tut-tuts about a ‘disgraceful row’ at
West Hartlepool.

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The London School Board sets the pace

4. The London Board was set up by a special
Act of Parliament since its problems were
unique. Itled the way in many important fields;
pioneered the use of a secret ballot; enforced
compulsory attendance; and developed new
ideas in teacher-training. J. W. Walton's
picture shows the 53 members of the first
London Board, including two ladies, being
addressed by the chairman, Lord Lawrence.
Many outstanding people sat on the Board.

The London reformers

5. Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson, the woman who
broke through the barriers against her sex in
the field of medicine.

6. The 6th Marquess of Londonderry. He was
chairman of the Board from 1895-7, and became
President of the Board of Education in Balfour's ~
Government.

7. Sydney Webb. As chairman of the London
Technical Education Board he introduced a
scholarship system that was adopted
nationally after 1902.

8. Thomas Huxley, the famous scientist. He sat
on the first Board and shaped the scheme of
religious education.

Teachers campaign

to end child labour

With the demand for child labour continuing, many children were

sull employed after 1870. A campaign to amend the Factory Acts was
one of the earliest and most vigorous conducted by the Union. In 1874
the minimum age for full-time employment was raised from 13 to 14.

4. A young boy working a machine for
making shoe-laces.

2. Conditions in the brickfields were particularly
harsh.

3. Half-timers leaving a Lancashire mill for a
few hours of schooling. The system of half-
timers (half-time at school, half at work) proved
more intractable. It was a truce situation to
meet the demands of certain employers, mainly
the millowners of Lancashire and Yorkshire and
the farmers of East Anglia. The minimum age
was raised from 10 to 11 in 1891 (again partly

through Union pressure) but the system
lingered on until 1918.

4. Parents were not always quick to appreciate
the advantages of full-time schooling against

the loss of extra wages.

5. A group of cheerful shoeblacks in Liverpool.

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GREAT YARMOUTH

SCHOOL BOARD
CAUTION
PARENTS

SENDING

‘CHILDREN TO SEF

Notice is Hereby Given, that the
Parent of any Child between the ages -
of 5 and 18, sending such Child to Sea,

. during the time it should be at School,
is liable to a Mme of Sa. for every
offence, and the Board have resolved to
direct a Prosecution in all cases occur-
ing after this Notice.

C. H. WILTSHIRE, :

Met May, 1876. Clerk (o the Board.

‘We can’t learn, Sir, we're starving’

The introduction of fully compulsory education in 1880 brought many
more children to school for the first time. It soon became apparent that
their poor physical condition was a major barrier to learning. In the
1890’s Charles Booth published his monumental survey, Life and Labour
in London, which for the first time demonstrated the extent of the
problem of poverty.

1. A Punch cartoon summed up the situation
neatly. The boy is asking ‘Please, sir, mayn't
we have summat to relieve the craving of
‘unger fust?’

2. Health services were limited to cleaning up
the children. Often schools were shut for weeks
because of an epidemic.

3. A ‘penny dinner’ for Baard school children.
Charitable bodies were beginning to provide
meals, but as yet no official action was taken.

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The Union’s first campaigns

The Forster Act sect off an unprecedented
burst of school building, and a consequent
expansion of the teacher force which the
Union, ably led from the beginning, used to
consolidate its position and to press for
educational improvements. (Before examining
the growth of the union in detail in these
years it is worth having a look at the broad
sweep of educational developments.)

‘Next to the Eastern Question’, said Mr W.
Gardner, president of the Union in 1877,
‘the question of Education is undoubtedly
the question of the day. It has been dealt
with by men of every shade of opinion,
political and religious. It forms one of the
chief topics of almost every public speech’.
In this atmosphere of enthusiasm the new
School Boards and the church authorities
took off in an orgy of competitive school
building. Pressing on the School Boards
were the nonconformists, often in political
alliance with the Liberal Party, who were
hostile to the idea of sending their children
to Anglican schools; at the same time the
Boards could count on the support, which
became increasingly important towards the
close of the century, of working class organisa-
tions like the trade unions which generally
supported nonsectarian, popularly controlled
schools.

On the other side the Anglican drive to
extend the voluntary schools was equally
understandable. In the eyes of the Bishops
the church was in danger of losing its influence
on education — particularly dangerous if this
meant that the working class was to be lost
to secularism. (In this period too there was
a real fear that the Church of England
might be disestablished.) But the Anglicans,
informally cooperating with the Conservative
Party, found themselves constantly lagging
behind the superior resources of the Boards,
backed by the rates. It was a continual
grievance to the Church that the faithful had
to pay twice - once for the school rates and
once by levy for the voluntary schools. In
these circumstances the Anglicans resorted
to attempts to capture the School Boards
with the twin objectives of keeping their
rates and enterprise on a tight rein and,
where possible, of inserting religious tests in
the Board schools. By the 90s, when the
position of the voluntary schools was getting
increasingly untenable, Bishop Fox of Bir-
mingham carried out a successful putsch on
the city’s School Board —- where Chamber-
lainites had long repressed religious teaching —
and the celebrated Rev. J. R. Diggle, chairman
of the London School Board, attempted to
impose a theological test on teachers.

In one year in the early 70s accommodation
for children in schools rose by a sixth. In
that decade the School Boards started or took
over between 3000 and 4000 schools while the

number of voluntary schools rose from 8000
to 14000. But the sharp disparity in standards
between the rival systems is indicated by the
following figures: whereas between 1870 and
1895 the School Boards provided new
accommodation for 2,211,299 children for
£29,468,477, the voluntary schools, between
1870 and 1891, built places for 1,475,000 for
only £7m. By 1900 there were almost as
many children in Board Schools as in the
voluntary ones.

From the point of view of the Union this
unequal struggle, which was reflected in
variations of teacher salaries and marked
differences between urban and rural stan-
dards, was no cause for delight. By training
and outlook many of the certificated teachers
were religious men, and Anglicans. But
however much they disliked it they found
themselves in a position where, as Mr Allen
Croft, the Union’s president in 1902 explained,
nearly two-thirds of the certificated teachers
were in Board schools while over four-fifths
of the Article 68 assistant teachers (basically
untrained women) were in voluntary schools.
By then the Board schools together had five
times more income in rates that the voluntary
schools were able to win from sources that
ranged down to church bazaars.

Broadly speaking the teachers found,
following the 1870 Act, that their best
employers were the larger School Boards.
Both the small Boards and the voluntary
managers — particularly rural parsons —
could be downright tyrannical. Whereas
far sighted and enthusiastic people might
be elected to the School Boards, like T. H.
Huxley in London or Margaret McMillan,
the famous ILP campaigner for free meals
and medical inspection, in Bradford, ill
educated and narrow minded people might
also have oversight of the Board schools.
One London head teacher, who was under
attack from some of his managers for refusing
to go beyond the syllabus of religious
instruction laid down by the School Board,
made the mistake of leaving a degree textbook
on physiology on his desk during the lunch
hour. A prudish woman manager spotted the
book and engineered a nasty correspondence
in the local press. One letter went, ‘Sir, We
were informed that our poor children were
to be taught reading, writing and arithmetic
only. Now this schoolmaster teaches them the
contents of their own insides and thus adds
to the rudeness which is innate in the lower
orders. If the Author of the Universe had
meant us to know what our livers are like he
would not have hidden them away in security’.

The worst aspect of this kind of manage-
ment was that teachers were often dismissed
capriciously. In the countryside, for example,
where the rector and schoolteacher formed the
local cultural establishment, a considerable

number of clergymen held the view that an
incoming parson had the right to dismiss the
head of his voluntary school. Even the Church
Times, on December 15, 1894, recognised
the injustice that was involved. ‘There is one
point of clerical conduct which demands
serious attention. We refer to the autocratic
and unjust treatment to which the masters
of parish schools too frequently have to
submit’, it stated, adding that teachers should
have a court of appeal.

Mr Marshall Jackman, president of the
Union in 1900, said that it was having to deal
with tenure cases at a rate that suggested
that some 60 per cent of teachers might
need some advice in the course of a working
lifetime. In his presidential address he listed
a number of scandals that had been referred
to the union. A master of 16 years’ service,
for instance, was asked to sign a new agree-
ment which meant a loss of £20 a year in
salary. At first the vicar denied that there
was any reduction, but then he had to admit
that there was. ‘He said he wanted the
money for repairing the roof of the church’,
added Mr Jackman. One teacher was dis-
missed because she refused to attend early
communion, another because he had tried to
get rid of an incompetent Article 68 teacher,
who happened to be the verger’s daughter.
In the same address, in a pardonable slip
into Victorian sentimentality, he mentioned a
Southport teacher who had gone to ‘a
premature grave’ because of the worry of a
tenure battle, and of a wife who had com-
mitted suicide. (‘Never lived a better man’,
she wrote, ‘truly a martyr. How shockingly
treated... Father, be good to my boys.
Dear Mamma, see Fred through . . .’.)

Dismissal for an older certificated teacher,
at a time when there was a glut of Article 68
teachers who could be employed more cheaply,
could mean utter ruin, and one of the chief
services of the union to its members at this
period was that it fought tenure cases
energetically. The union took legal action
where necessary; in some cases, by investiga-
ting the original trust deeds, it was able to
reform a board of managers; at Brighton
and Cockermouth, by lobbying and a public
campaign, it managed to capture the School
Boards that had dismissed teachers at the
triennial elections; at Southampton it got a
dismissed teacher elected to the School
Board; and at Richmond, after a Mr Whittaker
had been fired, it took the ultimate step of
building a new school for him.

Although the Boards were empowered to
make attendance compulsory it was not until
1880 that attendance was made compulsory
throughout the country. Even then there
was one notable loophole, the ‘half-time’
system, which was particularly
the Lancashire cotton wDS; 1

:
;
5
=

arrangement, which derived from the Factory
Acts, children could leave school for half-
time employment at the age of ten, or rr
after 1893. The effect on young teenagers,
tade to attend school and do the repetitive
work of the factories, was pitiful. Ben Turner
recalled it as follows,
‘The day I was ten years of age, I went into
the mill as a half-timer. We had to go to
school one half-day and the mill the other
half-day. One week we started work at 6 am
and went on to 12.30 pm with a half hour for
breakfast. We then had to go to school From
2 to 4.30 pm. The opposite week we went to
school at 9 am until 12 noon, and to work from
1.30 pm until 6 pm. It was a bit cruel at times
when on the morning turn at the mill — for ir
meant being up at § am, getting a drop of some-
thing warm, and trudging off to the mill a mile

HO

oe

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away to begin work. In cwinter it was fearful’.

At the same time, in country areas, there
were similar abuses. When he wanted
youngsters to do some potato picking a
farmer, who might himself be a voluntary
school manager, would find it more economic
to pay a school attendance fine than to find
other labour. Efforts to secure a better and
more regular attendance were a prime
educational objective of the union in its
early years. J. H. Devonshire, president in
1875, pointed out then that it was ridiculous
that after such an impressive school building
programme nearly half the school places
were unoccupied. Absenteeism in Board

schools was running at 40 per cent at that
time. ‘A London school, opened between two
and three years ago’, he said, ‘has admitted,
up to this present time, considerably over

CERTIFICATE

VALUHB S/-

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Spe tea by post, The Series
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2,000 scholars, and the average attendance

a little over goo. What this means no-one Pe"
the teacher fully knows. A constant stream =
incomers, a constant stream of outgoers,
scholars must have changed on an average ———=
least every three months’.

Closely related to the attendance proble———
was the fact that, until the 1891 ‘Fre———
Education’ Act and in some schools for™™'=
longer, parents were obliged to pay fees i—=——=
their children’s elementary schooling - ===
‘school pence’. Fees varied from about 2d ==
8d a week, but they were sufficient to add (aaa
the hardships of a large family at the worst=——
point of a trade cycle. Councillor Threllfall,—
president of the Trades Union Congress in
1885~—a bad year in many manufacturing
districts - said that for a family with an
income of 15s to 18s a week and four children
the school pence could resule in a drastic
limiting of spending on food and clothing.
‘Under proper conditions education would be
hailed with joy, but Schoo! Board experience
will show that the Elementary Education
Acts are regarded hatred, and are
constantly evaded by thousands of families’,
he said. The delay between making atten-
dance compulsory and providing that it
could be free seems curious to modern eyes:
but Victorian views on the financial respon-
sibility of a family, and the dependence of
impecunious voluntary schools on fees, go
far to explain it.

But it is appropriate now to look at the
growth of the Union rather more closely.
“We inaugurate in founding this ‘National
Union of Elementary Teachers", no aggres-
sive association. We desire to assail nobody.
We do desire to think and act as reasonable
and educated men, to advocate improvements
in our educational schemes and machinery,
to look after the welfare of the nation as far
as elementary education affects it, and at the
same time try to advance our own interests,
convinced that by the elevation of the teacher,
we elevate the value of education, and
accelerate the progress of civilisation’, said
the president, J. J. Graves, in 1870. In this
spirit, eschewing the principles of militant
trade unionism put forward by the Notting-
ham association, the Union set out on its
eventful history

This first presidential outlined several of
the issues the Union was to take up firmly.
Graves pointed out, for instance, that although
the 1870 Education Act was generally welcome
it said nothing about how enough properly
trained and qualified teachers were to be
found for the new schools. He feared that
the standard of the certificate would be
lowered and looked forward to a consolidated
educational system in which children from
elementary schools could go to universities,
and in which elementary teachers could be
masters of grammar schools. He wanted the
union to fight for a pensions scheme, to make
it possible for elementary teachers to be
appointed to the inspectorate; he supported
compulsory schooling and the teaching of
nonsectarian religion.

The lowering of the value of the certificate
to cater for the expanding demand for

with

A page of advertisements from The Schoolmaster
in 1889.

teachers naturally riled those who had earned
one when it was a real mark of excellence.
The campaign to win some control of entry
into the profession-—conducted in the
twentieth century through such agencies as
the National Advisory Council for the
Training and Supply of Teachers — was well
begun in the roth century. After the initial
setback of the Revised Code, when teacher
salaries dropped and the number of pupil-
teachers fell, the 1870 Act led to a doubling
of the number of pupil-teachers in five years.
A deputation was sent to Forster to complain.
In 1878 T. E. Heller, then the general secre-
tary, told the union conference that ‘the
power of controlling the entrance into the
profession must be placed in the hands of an
independent representative body under the
control of Parliament, and the _ teacher’s
diploma must be placed beyond the caprice
or the necessities of a government depart-
menv.

In 1879 union pressure secured that a Bill
sponsored by the College of Preceptors,
which would specifically have debarred
elementary teachers from registration while
opening a register for those in middle class
schools, was withdrawn in the Commons.
Pressure on the Education Department
achieved some success in the 1880 code in
closing side entrances to the profession, and
thereafter there was a continuing effort to
reduce the number of unqualified teachers
and to raise the standard of the certificate.
But the majority report of the Cross Com-
mission, appointed by a Conservative Govern-
ment, did not favour the Union’s position
when it appeared in 1888.

The Union, in spite of sympathy in the
Education Department, did not get very far
in this campaign in the rgth century. Because
of the light they shed on the psychology of
the union at the turn of the century — as an
elite minority of teachers promoting working
class education —it is worth studying the
figures for the teaching force in 1899. In that
year there were only 62,000 certificated
teachers and about 80,000 others. Of the
certificated teachers, two thirds of whom
were Union members, there were 24,000
men (69°3 per cent trained for two years,
28-1 per cent untrained) and nearly 38,000
women (46°5 per cent trained for two years,
§0-9 per cent untrained). Of the uncertificated
lump there were 30,000 assistant teachers,
many of whom would be preparing for the
certificate exam, nearly 17,000 additional
women teachers (the Article 68 group who
needed only to be 18 plus, and to be vaccinated
and to satisfy an HMI), nearly 31,000
pupil-teachers, and about 2,500 probationers.

Another campaign by the Union, which was
fed by deep feeling, aimed to throw open the
Inspectorate to elementary teachers. Before
the Revised Code, when the great majority
of inspectors were clergyman who had taken
up the cause of popular education, the
relations between HMIs and teachers were
generally friendly and their cooperation was
fruitful. But the Code turned them into
hostile parties and the policy after 1870, to
appoint young university men with often no
better qualification than a claim on political
patronage, introduced class antagonism also.
Although the Cross Commission believed that

elementary teachers should have a chance of
this profitable promotion, and there seemed
in the 80s some hope that they would succeed
through the half-way stage of a Sub Inspec-
torate, the union suffered a setback in 1901
when the Inspectorate was reorganised and
recruitment was clearly restricted to Oxbridge
products.

Given the powers over teachers of managers
and HMIs and the severe penalty involved
in a suspension or cancellation of the teacher’s
certificate it was a continuing aim of the
Union to obtain a fair right of appeal. Anger
was aroused in 1877 when the department
started to publish a black list of teachers
whose certificates were in question, although
the teachers concerned had had no oppor-
tunity of answering charges of drunkenness,
immorality and so on. Hence the Union
was encouraged to launch a public fight over
the case of Mr R. E. H. Goffin, head of the
United Westminster Schools, and a member
of the Union’s executive. His certificate was
withdrawn in 1878 after he had been accused
by the Science and Art Department of having
obtained exam. papers and then passing the
information to his pupils.

Although the Union concentrated on the
need for an inquiry, rather than on the
innocence of Mr Goffin, it was highly
embarrassed when a Parliamentary Select
Committee set up after the outcry decided
that the original verdict was just. However in
1880 the Department promised that no
certificate would be cancelled or suspended
until the teacher had been informed of the
charges and had had a chance to explain
himself. By the end of the century an effective
informal consulation system had been estab-
lished between the union and the department
in all such cases.

One of the greatest victories on a point
embodied in the pioneers’ manifesto of 1870
was finally achieved by legislation in 1898 —a
national state-aided system of pensions for
teachers. The way in which the Union, by
persistent lobbying over decades, managed
to resuscitate the 1846 Minute and convert
it into a reality is an object lesson in pressure
group politics. In 1872, within two years of
the union’s foundation, a decade after the
Revised Code had swept away the hopes of
1846, the teachers had succeeded in getting a
Select Committee set up to examine the
possibility. Although the Committee’s report
was unhelpful the Committee of Council
revived its pension scheme for entrants
before 1862 in 1875; the final trigger that
brought in superannuation § throughout
England and Wales for teachers in both
Board and voluntary schools, was a Bill
from the London School Board in 1891 and a
tremendous campaign by the Union in the
same year.

Throughout the rgth century there was one
issue on which the union, which generally
enjoyed the support of radical and advanced
working class opinion, fell foul of its friends.
This was the issue of corporal punishment.
It was not until the publication of the Plowden
Report in 1967 that abolition became a
major talking point, but in the Victorian era
it caused lively controversy. Jeremy Bentham,
after all, had advocated abolition and later
there were both School Boards that tried to

limit the infliction of caning in their schools
and magistrates who were quick to penalise
schoolteachers. Corporal punishment was one
of the chief categories of ‘causes of difficulty’
for members with which the union had to
deal.

Such punishment, as has been shown, was
an integral part of the harsh regime with
which the Revised Code endowed the schools,
and HMiIs from cane-happy public schools
were not inclined to question it. The con-
ventional view of the union at this time was
given in a lecture to the 1890 conference by
Dr Abbott, recent head of the City of London
School. ‘From an interesting report by Mr
Fitch on American Schools, published last
year, I learn that “in most of the state and
city regulations teachers are absolutely
forbidden to inflict it”, and that is a point

T. J. Macnamara — a cartoon by ‘Spy’ in 1900.

worth considering ... Under proper regula-
tions, and in the hands of experienced and
responsible teachers, the cane seems to me an
institution for good in English schools as at
present constituted; and if, as I believe, this
is the general opinion not only of school
teachers but also of school managers, it
seems time that some pressure should be
brought to bear upon those magistrates who
set their face against caning under any
circumstances’. The Union opposed attempts:
to restrict the right of corporal punishmentto
heads alone; though it disappointed pro
gressive opinion at the time, its eventual —

victory in the war against ‘payment by results’
was a powerful shove in the same direction.
Dr Abbott’s reference to ‘pressure’ was a
recognition that in its first twenty years the
Union had developed effective methods of
making its views felt. From conferences with
MPs, to public petitions, to lobbying at
School Board elections — where a system of
multiple voting allowed minorities consider-
able power~-and to the remedies of legal
action, an armoury of useful weapons had
been built up. In 1872 the union had agreed
to a paid secretary, it had a regular organ in
The Schoolmaster (1d weekly, ‘The only
weckly paper entirely devoted to the interests
of the scholastic profession”) and, except
during the hostile secretaryship of Patric
Cumin (1884-90) the Union had good rela-
tions with the Education Department. In
1885 the union first attempted to sponsor its
own MPs, a controversial procedure that was
crowned with success in 1895 when the
general secretary J. H. Yoxall (Liberal) and
Ernest Gray (Conservative) were both elected.
In the 90s too the Union started blacklisting
schools in which teachers were forced to do
extraneous duties, although a proposal to set
up a sustentation fund to fight salary claims
was defeated in a referendum.

Affiliation to the TUC was beaten by a
two to one vote in 1895. Internally the
progress of the Union was marked by a
period of slow growth in the 1870s, followed
by a crisis in the mid 80s, and a rapid advance
in the 90s. Membership, which was nearly
§,000 in 1872, rose gradually, dipped in the
80s and stood at just over 16,000 in 1890;
by 1900 there were 43,621 members of the
Union. In 1889 the Union had changed its
name, from the National Union of Elemen-
tary Teachers~ which offended many on
status grounds and no longer accurately
described the work of some members — to
the National Union of Teachers. (A short
sighted proposal to call it the National Union
of English Teachers was dropped after a
patriotic campaign by Welsh members.)

William Lawson resigned as secretary in
1873, when he wrongly thought the con-
ference was about to embark on a policy of
militant trades unionism, and the secretary-
ship of T. E. Heller (1873-91) a church
teacher corresponded to the phase of con-
solidation. The difficulties of the 1880s seem
to have resulted from a variety of causes:
the advancing age of the ‘old guard’ of the
1870s, the growing rifts between Board and
voluntary teachers as the economic problems

of the voluntary schools worsened, and -_
Parliamentary initiative in 1885 which na
it appear that the union was lining itself
exclusively with the Liberal Party. A perenti==
difficulty was the friction between ua
relatively privileged London School Boars
teachers and other members of the Uniom™
At times the London School Board wa=
employing as many as a quarter of he
certificated teachers in the country; fromm
1873, when al] but one on the executive were
London teachers (the outsider came from no

further than Surbiton) until 1894, wheo

almost half the executive were Metropolitan

teachers, they formed a dominant group.

But if the 80s saw the growth of pressure
groups within the Union, they also saw the
start of a renewal. This was linked to the
success of a band of teachers who described
themselves as the ‘Indefatigables’. Led by an
exceptionally able pair, J. H. Yoxall (general
secretary 1892-1924) and T. J. Macnamara,
Editor of The Schoolmasrer from 1892, 4
brilliant orator and a Liberal MP in 1900,
they were responsible for the quick rise in
membership, the strong stand taken by the
union on a number of issues, and for steering
teachers round the quicksands of the 1902
Act.

Elementary schooling becomes
free and compulsory

The 1880 Act, which made schooling compulsory up to the age of 10,
included an arrangement which nicely illustrates the Victorian idea that
elementary education was a measurable and strictly limited commodity.
Children were allowed to leave at 10 if they had achieved a certain
standard or even if they had only put in the required number of
attendances; if not, they had to stay on until 13. By 1899 compulsion
extended to the age of 12. School fees put a severe strain on parental
resources, and the demand for free schooling became a torrent in the
1880’s, supported by the Union. The voluntary schools did not want to
forego fees, which put a major plank in their precarious financial
structure. The 1891 Act allowed Board and voluntary schools to admit
children free, and to claim a ‘fee grant’ from the Exchequer. The grant
constituted a hidden subsidy to voluntary schools.

Theologians continued to argue about religious education, though the
Union felt that parents were on the whole not much concerned. A few
Boards provided a purely secular education, but most followed the
example of Manchester in adopting a solution very similar to today’s
agreed syllabuses, by which local clergymen got together to work out a
scheme.

4. A schoolroom in the 1890's. The children in
the foreground are exercising with dumbbells.
It was quite common to have a single large
room housing the whole school, often divided
by movable partitions. There might be only one
qualified teacher, and he would concentrate on
the older pupils while superintending pupil-
teachers. The overall staffing ratio in 1897, even
allowing for pupil-teachers, was 35 to 1.

5 and 6. A gallery class in the Chelsea Oratory
Infants’ School. A gallery for the youngest
pupils was a standard feature, planned so that
the teacher could see clearly what each infant
was up to. Its static nature tellingly contrasts
with the free classroom atmosphere in the
same schoo! today.

Then and now 5

1, A London School Board capture. The
London Board was one of the first to compel
attendance and to employ a ‘Board's man‘ to
round up unwilling pupils.

2. In 1883 the Union sent this circular letter to
all local authorities complaining that in some
districts the 1880 Act was not being enforced.
It calls on ‘all educational agencies’ to ‘work
harmoniously together in securing the common
object of their efforts, viz. an improved
attendance at school.’ The Union believed,
rather idealistically, that a few years of strict
compulsion would create an educated
generation who would not need to be forced to
come to school. Some magistrates were
refusing to enforce the law, and same members
of School Boards and Attendance Committees
were in active opposition to it.

One cannot doubt the Union's belief in
educational progress, but there were also good
financial reasons why they should act strongly
on attendance. Grants to schools were partly
assessed by attendance figures and teachers
were in the long run dependant on government
grants. The letter points out that voluntary
schools in rural districts were particularly
threatened; attendance in some such schools
was as low as 52 per cent.

The Union recommended to the Education
Department the most specific actions to be r
taken, including a tightening-up of regulations z es mi)
relating to half-timers. It is a measure of the —
self-confidence the NUT had achieved. For
the first few years of their existence they had to
fight for any recognition from the Education
Department. But the appointment of Mundella,
a staunch friend of the Union, as Vice-President
in 1880 was a turning-point, though they heartily
disagreed with many of his actions.

uw

ational Anion of Glementary Teachers.

CIRCULAR LETTER TO LOCAL AUTHORITIES,

Ble ol Schovl-A HendeneeCommuitlee.
To the Clerk of the “*< <©C2-7~ Bee
School Board.

Srz,

During the past year the Executive of the National Union of Elementary ‘Teachers have
made a careful inquiry into the state bf Schvol Attendance in England and Wales, and have fully
considered the reports reccived from a large number of Tcachers' Associations in various parts of
the country. The Exceutive instituted this inquiry im consequence of the increased importance
of regular attendance under the New Code, and the numerous complaints received from Managers
and Teachers as to the lax way in which many Local Authoritics and Magistrates were applying
the law relating to compulsory attendance at school. The attention of the Education Department
has been already called to this question, and certain recommendations have been made with the
object of securing a more efficient administration of the law.

I an now instructed to call the attention of the Local Authorities to the subject, and to sugzest
that a simultancous effort should be immediately made by these bodies throughout England and
Wales to secure a better average attendance of scholars. In this effort it is the carncst desire of
the Teachers to co-operate, and it is hoped that all the educational agencies of the country, the religivus

“Dodics, Boards of Guardians. Magistrates, Local Authorities, and Attandalin (\flit

SOUL

Ue

The Oxfordshire collection

Oxfordshire County Council has a unique
photographic record that gives a very good idea
of the sort of country school being built in the
second half of the 19th century by Boards

and churches. These examples convey the
atmosphere of the simple buildings, something
in the style of the local churches. The
classrooms were heated by cumbersome
‘tortoise’ stoves and lit by oillamps. Glass
partitions were much favoured. The water
supply was usually a pump in the playground or
even had to be carried from the village pump.

The NUT fights for
a wider curriculum

The ‘payment by results’ system was introduced by the 1861 Revised
Code. The government grant to a school was assessed by individual
examination of each child, together with the level of attendance. The
‘standard’ to be reached was precisely laid down — hence the use of By
‘standard’ to denote classes. It was based on a utilitarian notion that
everything could be given a money value and it acted as a particularly
tight strait-jacket on educational methods. To achieve the grant teachers
had little choice but to drill their pupils into a mechanical facility. The
NUT fought a long and bitter battle against the system, and its abolition
in 1895 was one of the Union’s major achievements in this period.
The contents of the curriculum began with a narrow insistence on the

2. Some HMIs were against the ‘payment by
results’ system which they had to administer.
The most outspoken was Matthew Arnold, who
called it ‘a game of mechanical contrivance’ In
which children were ‘forcibly fed with semi-
digested food.’

3. Inspection day was a trial jor teachers and
pupils. This song was a brave attempt to keep
up their spirits.

3 Rs, but gradually broadened with the introduction of ‘optional subjects’
into a more liberal education. ‘Class’ subjects including geography and

history could be taught above Standard I. ‘Specific’ subjects such as

science were taught above Standard IV.

Why teachers hated and feared the HMI

Would you like to know the reason
Why we all Jook bright and gay
As we hasten to our places ?
This is our Inspection Day !
J Vie! what is tbat you say,

You hate Inspection Day ?

had over every aspect of their work. Their

dislike was exacerbated by the fact that 2.

1. D. R. Fearon in a standard work on School
Inspection in 1876 wrote that ‘Education,
unfortunately Is an art, which is subject to so
many delusions, that teachers whose work is
not tested by examination as well as by
inspection will be sure to deceive both
themselves and the inspector.’ The teachers
regarded HMis as their natural enemies — not
surprising in the light of the power inspectors

MR. STEWART'S TESTIMONIAL.

inspectors were Oxbridge men with no direct

™
experience of elementary schools. The Union f
failed completely to achieve the promotion of
teachers to the inspectorate. The pages of The eres.

Schoo/master were full of complaints about
inspectors, of which the most startling piece of
invective is this attack by James Runciman on t
the Rev. D. J. Stewart. How much duller modern
newspapers are under the present libel laws.

) lay

If we know we've done our duty,
Daily striving with our might,
Teacher says we need not worry
Though our sums will not come right.
So we are glad and gay,

Though ‘tis Inspection Day.

By James Ruscruay.

It surely cannot be true that any attempt will be made to present publicly
a testimonial to the Rev. D. J. Stewart. His private frienda may, if they
like, make him a present, to show their regard; but it would be stupid—it
would be wicked—to make it appear that the Greenwich teacher, as a body,
approve his conduct. When I think of the misery caused by that man, I
find it hard to restrain myuelf. His cynical contempt for fairness and for
common truthfulness le me indignant; and I know, only too well, how
many fine young fellows have been hindered in life through his lazy and
haphazard mode of endorsing certificates. Why, that man would lounge
round a school for ten minutes, and then go away to write the same
mechanical report on the certificates of the whole ataff! In some cases, the
(Saag scribbled on by Mr. Stewurt is about as valuable as a ticket-of-
we to its possessor. Then look at the insolence of his attitude towarda
teachers; read the jeering accusations which he uttered before the Royal
Commission; and then say whether any feeling save solemn indignation
should be made manifest toward him. He never demaged me, and
Z guess if he had tried it on once, he never would have repeated
the Epeation ; but I saw him serve one of my sssistants in a
way w f the memory makes my handa twitch to this day.

4. This advertisement sums up very well what
elementary schooling was ail about.

7 Hartlepool Beard School. %

Bee, Savarese om ti
Head Master, Mr. WILLIAM McDONALD.

Ist Assistant Master, - -Mr. H. BOWNASS. i
2nd do., -Mr. H.C. MARSTON. |!
ard do., - + -Mr.T.B, BUCKLE. ''

Drill Instructor, - - - -Mr. C. RAMSEY. '
NO BOYS ARE EMPLOYED AS TEACHERS. \{

SOHOOL FEES.
STANDARDS L. U.. DIL. , . . .
Do. Tv.. V.. VL
A FAMILY, . : - 10d. do. LS
All Fees are pryalte in odcunce, and should be paid rach Monday morning. — |
Arrears are repurtal to the Schout Hoard when they amount to 246d. A dated receipt ie
fa yiten fur euch payment of schiol fees. J ie
th. H

‘
en. rE

'

!

3d. per Week.
4d. do.

BUBIESTS OF STUDY.
ELEMENTARY —Vivspive, Waitixo, any Agitnyeti:.
, Advanced --Groumarny, Guamman, Duawirc, Tioretican Mvaic, Commprciat
: Counearoxvescy, Crewiray QF Commox Tuisos, Excrien Litenattxe, |
Shiaony, amp Compuarrioy. “ae P
Special Subjects for ltoyn who linvesfmmed the Sixth Standart of Faucution.—
TacamitiiMeticaL AmTixenc, Ev@Lip, Aoi, Meseuration, TRigoxou eri,
Da. Site's Piker Gazex arp Latin Courses,
Forty Minutes in devoted each day to Scripture.
at Wh te rrr eee ene G
PRIVATE LESSONS
May nx map ix Navicatiox, Na i Asrhuxomy, Duawisa, Theanetical
Mecuaxies, AL ED MATIRMATICS.
‘The Weud Tearhet buble opr tal ads Hrnivat Certificates ty thes: Fubjects,

HOURS OF ATTENDANCE.
Morning Nine to Eleven-Thirty. Afterngon—Onc-Thirty to Pour-Thirty.
Theaa hours facilitate dinner carrying.
Books OPEN TEN MINUTES EARLIEK PUN AaSEMBLY |
Punctuality aul Regularity are of importance ty the pron of pupils individually
ainl the welideiuy of the Schoul generally.

i

a RR ee _-
nen

latent a Stet a i Gar

2 ; ;
Vhids, wh FD inude ys Ave Fearnifal therngs
/ /

") . '
Wdke your tar heating fob awh loud having Weng:

% 5 >
Whe shill man wanda. ant whi shuld te tet,
fe “a J f
Pyeaiut hl OI tide! Vhudiyt come sited as tell?
/

ib hava eben Hi dta ln tle quggdin nd ate

ake
ss

Ze ie iad nas he 4 71 Ma forest all he nglid aud dark.

S

! a 5. Page of a copy-book. Great emphasis was
Ye Cal eh ye Lice mnt Uics collages 400, laid on good handwriting and moral precepts.
: A 5 et ound tha haat maar Cave. 6. Teachers lost a great deal of liberal
ys alert on the acd #
= a , 7

corporal punishment, for even minor mistakes.

sympathy by their insistence on the right to use
| But it was true that they had a very tough job.

io}
5 r SCHOOL BOARD FOR LONDON.
- 8 : i The Board are prepared to receiyo applicatiana from
“Derry wren. ama |i benpwnetion gorumnag tive H Candidates for the following appointments, in connection
} : n = ee i rtified I ii
Worach truss | tegnove |) | wodbsbogethaly, 2 | Tikhatetart onan son fr Dean Boru i
Li warren ody bates. tril] berm Yloum. 3 2g Turm,| SOU AS TEE Soon yeaU mata poeta lodging,
peak Aen = a 2 : and waal E ndidatea mus' ween the ages
We Del. rule linvabaneeas Rink, tami. Varn, boaw and’somae j
eh \ AME ona Pes = seceo nevumig by vrs) A Discipline MASTER. £30 a year, with board, lodging,
c Ane ’ if

tress Ibert Noun. 3¥ Pen, Pe. Tum.
Wen weno, boneto
IPrieteoetorn. Gout ag” ve’
AL | ull chr licla torriborastrtove:
grove born, Toumn., 3! Pen. ding Num.

es Hen. Wty bare gorse

mn and washing.
r tranche so ~) $7. A Discipline MASTER (Non-resident). £70 a year.
— A Night Watchman (Non-resident. £1] a week.
A Cook (Female). Not exceeding $18 a year, with board,
lodging, and washing.
Applications, accompanied by copies of not more than
three testimonials, and naar¥edt outside “ Application for
Sahoolmaster, or Discipline Master,” &o.,as the case may
be, must bo addrrased to the Clerk, School Board Offices,
Victoria Embankment, W.0., and must be received by him

4 on or before Saturday, the 17th November, 1877. 359
pou Pur, Ynramntive. 8
oe Yemae Imclic, Tr00
Cam pouth. Wat. tre’

WM Peaore,, by

( cAd yet Cnn rn
P bern. Noun, oH PLL rahe

Or ek, Mane orn. taneqgovurned.
frutee wed cpl

7. Parsing was regarded as a very necessary
exercise. Appreciation of literature was not so
highly prized.

8. A ‘discipline master’ was a strange sort of
specialist body. Note that he actually received
less than the nightwatchman. Salary scales
fluctuated wildly from district to district. The
country schoolmaster in a voluntary school
came off worst. SS

Se a -
. . : . Hi two bunche: herrics. — Ho th in the first? Hor many tt the secoml! Hoe wiuy are 38 39 Of whol etoar are tree
9. This Victorian text-book, though, has quite a Wiel uapuvacti cues oe We is inside a chery? Uf what use are cherrica? dic they gol? (3 20 ad
modern thematic approach and is attractively

designed.

If 2 out of 5 cups are broken ave mony renin? Tell me game other casity Uivien retel? What ie tho mae of cups?
they made? (deseribe ta the child how they ace wade.) (2 from 5 = 3,4 t L » & en 3 times Lb)

PUPIL TEACHER EXAMINATION PAPERS.

CanpDiDATEs.
Three hours and a half allowed.
Dictation.
“Write from diotation the passage given out by the Inspector.
Grammar.

Point ont the parla of ep-ech in the following lines, and, if you sr: able, parse
‘the words :—

If gems we ek we only tire,
And lift our hopes too high,
The con-tant flowers that hne our way ;
Alone can satisfy.
Arithmetic.
Write down and work the sume dictated to you by the Inspector.
Geography.

1, Explain cach word in the following passage printed in italice, ard give
examples in North Wulea. Nuine the counties :—North Wales is a land of soaring
heights, limited plains, narrow vale, and deep savines. Ita highest pe2k rieea
3,751 feet above the sca Ievel. The snountains are full of minerals, It is divided

{nto six counties. The principal railway ia that from Cheater to Holyhead, crvssing
the Menai Straits by the famous (usulur dridge.

2. Dues a globe or x m=p of the world give the more correct view of it ? Ie
- eitter perfectly corre:t? Give reasons for your answer,
Enp or First YEan.
Three houra and a half allowed.

Arithinetic.

1. A person gives a £5 nole to pny the following bill :—3% cwt. of coals at 1044.
acwt.; 13 Iba. of cheese at 721. a Ib.; 24 Ibs. of tea at Su. 3d. a Ib. ; 17 Ibs. of
euger at 6jd. ab. ; 8) yards of flannel nt le. 1194. 0 yard; and 29 yardae of calico
at 1081. a yard. What change asbould he receive P

2. Find, by practice, the valuc of 1 pipe 47 gal. 1 qt. of wine at £28 17s. 6d. a
bogahead.

3. Find the valuo of 2,037) cwt. of augar at £1 193. 84d. a cwt.

4. Work by practice :—A bankrupi's 2ebta amount to £3,548 Gs. 8d., what will

hie creditora 100 if he pays 12s. 10}d. in the pound P

Grammar.
1, Give inatancea of verbs which do not change their form for the perfect tenre and
the pessive eels,
2 What

the positive which you assign to each of the following comparativea;
Surther, nether, utter, former, latter ?

8. Parse fully the fullowing linea :—
As late each flower that swcetcat blows
I plucked, the gardcn’s pride,
Witnina the petals of a rose
A slecping love I spiced.
N.B.—This third question must be taken.
Geography.
1, Draw a fall map of Camberland, Weetmoreland, and Lancashire.

2. Describe, aa exactly as you cau, the aituation and character of Liverpool,
*Cheater, Hull, Bristol, Oxford. Cambridge, and Southampton.

N.B.—Do mot merely give the place where each town stands, but say something
: Of tha character of the country round it, §c., ¢¢

3. Name the chief Jakes of Scotland and Ircland, and deecribe their situations
and the chasacter of the surruunding country. If yuu have learnt any part of the
“Lady of the Lake,” quote lines in illustrativn of the «cenery of Loch Katrine.

Composition.
Write from memory tho substance of the pasasge read to you by the inapector.

Enp oy Seconp Year.
Three hours and a half allowed.

Arithmetic.
Mates.
1. What feaction of a mile is } of 3 of a mila + § of 9 of 23 furl
aasonks + 18§ poles ? : ee ll ae ai

. A farmer went to market with £2] in bis pocket. He received for wheat sold
£2704; for barley, £377, ; for oats, £17§; for pou) 18Je.; for eggs, 3g4. Ho’
fea dia baste bok OE a LU la y

3. A merchant owns ¢ of a ship worth £3,000 and ite cargo worth £27,000.
He purchases another person's ahare, which is 4 of § of it. What part of it has
he now. ard what is its value?

4. Find by decimals (to three places) how often £1 19s. 112
£6178 18s. 644.

d. is contained in
Femarne.

1. The first. third, and fourth terms of a proportion are 3 owt. 14 Ibs., £1 7s, 1d,
and £6 1s. 10d. respectively. Find the second terma.
2. If the wages of 13 men for 7} days amount to £13 7s. 014., how many men
ht to work for 4 weeks £173 8s.?

.8. If 4 yards of ribbon cost 34d., what will be the coat of 64 pieces. each con-
-tiining 185) ells ?

4. If 24 Ibe. of wool make 115 yards of cloth 1 yard wide, how much cloth 1}

yards wide ought 12 ox. to make.
Grammar.

ol, What {a « preposition ? sien, show in short sontences, that eich of the pre- | D

, positions by, of, and «ith is ua d in more than one sense,

Env oY Fourts YgAB.
Three and a half hours allowed.
Arithmetic.

Maza.

1. A customer lodged £175 in the bank at 4} per cent. per annum simple
interest. What sum ought he to be able to draw out again at the end of 6 years

and 10 months?
2. Aman sold « quantity of snuff for £50, and by #0 doing loat 334 per cent.
Fad given for it?

What sum should he have sold it for to get 214 times what he
3. A tradesman starts with a capital of £6,500, and makes an annul profit of
rit what rate do his annual personal expenses increase if his capital

128 per cent.
onby acres £100
“ . What is the differen

@ year, and what are his persona! expenses the firat year?
£300, each instalment

ce between prying £1,200 by four quarterly instalmenta
after payment bearing interest at 6 per cent. per snnum,
tiga half-yearly payments of £600, each

instalment bearing interest at 64

Femans.
1. aoe added tothe sum of ‘0007 + 2:4 + -05 + 3°0136 + “047 will

the difference between # pk., and -0625 of = bushel, as the decimal of

3. If 40 men can roap 400°6 ac. in 1276 daya, how many acres onght 30 —
to in 34 dayaP

ak man te a given § of the money in hia purro fora sheep, and -278 of —
remainder for a horse, had 1-6876 still left. What aum had be at firat?

Gramsar, a =

1. There waa once a young shepherd, who wished to marry, 4nd knew t —
siatera; bot as each shes wast as EUs. aa the others he waa doubtful which —_
prefer. = itali
Analyse the foregoing passage, and parao the words which are in italioa.

2. rene paaicha Totin ee, Sabaneta or “carried.” Explain from the bt —
tion the following words :—Adlative, collate, dilute, elated, illative, relative, corr
tive, superlative, translation.

Geography.

1. Diaw a fall map of the Caspian Sea.

2. Give a short Pana of tne Anleonessn: the east aad south-east of Asis
desoribing generally the character of the inhabitants of cach. .

3. Give Gites of a lesson to a young cliss on ‘‘a map of the Eeatern Hemi
aphere.” explaining the shape of it, the lines which cross it, &o., and giving
general ideas about the rcason of the differences of climate in different coun
ecoording to their diatance from the equator.

Env or Fourtm Yxar (Sxconp Para).
One hour allowed for Females.
Two hours and a half allowod for Males.
History.

1. Tell how the Houscs of York and Lancaster wero united, and aketch tha
character of Henry VII.’s queen?

2. What do you know about Princesa Elizabeth, danghter of James 1, ond
about her deacendanta ?

3. To what canaes would you attribute tho prosperity of the United Kingdcm?

Composition.
Write from memory the anbstance of the panesgo rcad to you by the Inspector.

Euclid.
1, The opposite sides and angles of a parallelogrem arc cqual to one another,
and the diameter bisects the parellelogram—that is, divides it into two equal parts.

2. 11 the three sides of a triangle be produced, tho sum of the exterior angles
is equal to four right angler.

Enp or Firrn YEAR.
Three houra and a half allowod.
Arithmetio. .

1. How much higher will the terminus of a railrond 280 miles long be than its
atarting point, if for -25 of ita length the line ascenda 1 foot in 90, and for the last
*l of its Pogth descenda 1 foot in 65, the remainder being level.

2. At what per centage, compound interest, would 750 amount in two years to
£826 170. 647? .

3. A man makes his wil] that eae” eer Aad legatees are to be paid in fall before
anything ja given to the others. e bequeaths to A £3,760, to B erie ta C
£3,280, to D £2,000, to E £1,895, to F £1,760, to G@ £1,668,to H £1,/46, to K
£1,475, and to L £1,067. The whole estate turns out to be worth £19,575. How

, should the money be distributed.

| 4. What ie the prosent value of £195,586 due one year nine mortha henoe—dis-
count at 6 per cent. per annum?
@ 5. Took money out of a bank giving 2 per cent., and bought five £20 shares
bearing intereat at 84 per cont. the share to bere up in six equal instalments. I
at once paid up five instalmenta, and at the end ofa year and a-half the property

having increased 17} per cant. in value, I aold my shares. What did I gain by
the whole transaction.

Grammar.

Ales! how light a cause may move

Dissension between hearts that Jove :

Hoarts that the world in vain had tried

And sorrow Sut more olowely fied,

That atood the storm when waves were rough,

‘Will yet in sunny hour fall off. 5
Analyse the above linea and parse the words whioh are in Italics.

2. From what language are the greatest number of English words derived ?

Composition.

Write a short essay on Punctuality in the language you would use if you were
giving « lesson to a first class.

2. Parse the following :—
“ Old yew, which graspest at the atonca
That name the underlying doad,
Thy fibres mot the dreamleas head ;
Thy roots are wrapped about the bones.”
Geography.

1. Draw a map of the coast line from Cape Matapan to the Dardanelles.

2. Give notes of a lesson on “Jakes” under these heade:—a. How lakes are
formed. }. Character of the scenery usually founi round them. ¢. Llustrations
from England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, and Italy.

3. Where and what are Ajaccio, Amiens, Bayonne, St. Bernard, Cherbourg;
ordogne, Havre, Iayere, Macon, Metz, Nice, Oleron, Sdvrea, Ushant? Say s0me-
thing about at least siz of the above, and more if you have time.

History.
1. Give the dates of the following eventa:—a. The building of Hadrian's wall.
b. The building of Antonine’sa wall. ¢. Departure of the Romans from Britain.
* ae eee down a list of English sovereigna from William I. to Henry Il. with

t}

3. Tell when our Queen ascended the th tion her Majesty's parentage
and relationship to the three proceding sovercigns. mars A

Composition.
Write from memory the aubstance of the passage read (o you by the inapector.

Enp oy TH1zp Year.
Three hours and a half allowed.
Arithmetic.
1, I invested £730 pean t
. I fnves' on 25th March, and on the 29ch Soptember following i
amounted to £777. What was the rate of interest por cant. hee annum P

2. If in a school of 360 children 27 play truant and 63 are sick, what per centage
of non-attendance is due to troancy and to sickness reapectively 2

8, In what time will any sum of money treble iteslf at 24 per cent. and at 12%
per cent. annum, simple interest ?
4. If the proportion of nitrogin in the alr ia 70 per cent., and of oxygen 20 per

cent., what quantity of nitrogen and oxygen reapectively will there be iu an apart-
ment containing 908,600 gallons of air ?

The child teacher

The 1870 Act brought a rapid expansion in the number of pupil-teachers —_1. How many teachers today would care to tackle
this examination of pupil-teachers? They were

but later in the century numbers dropped, especially among boys, as examined and certificated by thellsGemenm
other jobs opened up. Only a minority went to training colleges, which

il 1 B ll ass 5 2. An indenture setting out the terms of
were all voluntary. By 1900 43 colleges were training just over I,000 service of a pupil tesenee
students. The small band of trained certificated teachers were in danger

f : ane : Albod at aed a i 3. A student being examined in her classroom
of being swamped by a growing flood of untrained assistant teachers, technique at Bishop Otter Colaaman
and the Union’s fears about ‘dilution’ were proving well-founded. Chichester. Practically all training colleges
‘ before 1900 were run by the Church of
Some developments were encouraging, however. Central classes for England)
pupil-teachers had been started in London and had become popular
: yeaah th fd oe 4. The oldest training college in England and

elsewhere. Even more significant was the appearance of day training one of the few which did aolinipMeeie
centres following the Cross Commission in 1889. Attached to religious test on applicants was the Borough

er Ene ¢ She Ul Ontord dc Bra Road Training College. It had evolved from
several of the new universities as well as Oxford and Cambridge, the Borough Road School and antieseis
they gave teachers in training the opportunity to be taught by moved to new quarters in Isleworth, where it

‘ a a af d M ieee Ul is still going strong. This common room, bare

university lecturers and to read for a degree. Many training colleges though It is to modern ayes. aeantannnn
also allowed students to stay an extra year to read for an external improvement on earlier conditions.
degree.

This was the first step away from the closed system of elementary
school teaching. The NUT supported the ideal of the integration of
pupil-teacher training with secondary schools and training colleges with
universities, and envisaged a united profession. But opposition came
from secondary teachers who wanted to retain their separate identity.

Exuuww asp Wan s/1 9 97,

1 Maman, Bee be
ee |
the meee

Mawomaxoum or Aounmiusr Letwcen! Se Glo =

Learning and leisure
for the rich

Secondary education — the term came into general use at the end of the
century — was not originally intended for elementary scholars and was held
to be outside the responsibility of the state. But in various ways
secondary education did develop. The teaching of ‘specific’ subjects,
usually scientific, became centralised and developed into higher grade
Board schools, mainly in northern towns.

The Science and Art Department at Kensington gave grants to all kinds
of schools for teaching scientific and technical subjects. County Councils
were able to use ‘whisky money’ (compensation for redundant publicans —
that Victorian morality would not allow to go to its rightful recipients),
either for paying policemen’s pensions or improving technical education
____ and many used it for the latter purpose. All this meant haphazard
development with overlapping authorities, and emphasis on narrow
nical training. In 1900 the Cockerton judgment which denied the
ht of School Boards to supply higher grade education meant that the

o--aede eat eh ev oe

PIL

Ba

1. Boating at Eton under Windsor Castle. The
second half of the 19th century saw the
establishment of the public school system as
we know it. Thomas Arnold was only one of a
generation of reforming headmasters who laid
emphasis on character-building and games and
broadened the curriculum. Meanwhile the old
endowed grammar schools excluded local
foundationers and became fee-paying schools
forthe middle-classes. An elitist secondary
education evolved, free of all government
control.

2. The best of the science schools attracted
graduate scientists as teachers. It was

clear that they were seeking for the same
relationship with the new universities that the
grammar and public schools had with the old.

3. The Science and Art Department in
Kensington had been created after the 1851
Exhibition with the idea of encouraging
scientific developments. It was technically
under the supervision of the Vice-President of
the Committee of Council, like the Education
Department, but it was a case of the right hand
not knowing what the left hand was doing.

4. The masses don't want higher education,
said Punch, But it was scarcely true. A trend
towards staying on at school after 12 was
growing, and ‘night schools', working men’s
institutes and every sort of college open to
ordinary people were enthusiastically attended.

Mechanics for the poor

WMITTEE OF HEH MAJESTYS MOst [ly

pags aaa

it
i)

3eyn sudd - ouLdarng ss fs

An Mars LLouto> yp

ee 4 AIK

—ai

Te :
Ki

we
ewe
‘Ch —

as

ee /

oN
‘y
tt

IG Be:
:

Cetod o “Peat Sabvothot
) [2 i batthele ey, MO,
wedi myned yn llwyddianus drwy yr Arholiad,

I - Dosparth - La yersetet Gradd _ li. af pm

hea pile he,
af toiSet deen feu YtA.. A Ppa ana Atom

Lgrser yaa .

es

Via:
are

9

J ae & 2

’ a

Wie Lat , A 4 th Sea Nw a!
< an eee
“Touee uwiree nawer Fone. e NES TSS eee
\ ~ |
ick tilisoe eas: A Peo * os LT <M A NNR ETE |
- —__— ‘

1. Sunday schools were a vital element in developed, they helped to spread literacy and
Welsh society from the 18th century onwards. to preserve Welsh as a written language. This
Setting out to teach young and old to read the certificate was presented to a West Glamorgan
Bibie, they were instrumental in the spread of scholar in 1889. Joseph Harris and Christmas
Calvinist Methodism through North and South Evans were famous preachers ~ ‘Goodbye,
Wales. Before any formal education had drive on’ were the latter’s dying words.

Wales the same but different

The system of state education, begun in 1870, applied equally to
England and Wales, but there have always been distinguishing features to
schooling in the Principality. Even more than in England, the early
history of elementary education was determined by religious controversy
between Church and Dissent, bound up as it was with differences in
class, culture, and language. In a poor country, education was highly
prized, and only a genuine popular demand can explain the precocious
development of secondary education after the 1889 Intermediate Act.

In the 20th century, Wales has always had a high proportion of its
children going on to secondary school, and of these a large number have
become teachers. ‘The long tradition of Welsh teaching makes it highly
appropriate that Welsh members succeeded in forestalling a move in 1889
to rename the National Union of Elementary Teachers the National
Union of English Teachers. The National Union of Teachers, in name
at least, is a Welsh creation.

2. In 1907, a Welsh Department of the Board of
Education was established to satisfy, in part at
least, the demand for Welsh autonomy in
educational matters. Its first team, pictured
here, was led by Owen M. Edwards, Chief
Inspectar, who is seated second from the left.
His aim was to allow Welsh schools to develop
along their own lines as much as possible, and
under his guidance the place of Welsh in the
curriculum was assured. He had considerable
faith in the ability of teachers to decide what
they should teach and trusted the NUT to
make professional decisions.

3. Ardwyn Grammar School in Aberystwyth,
founded in 1896. By 1907 there were 96 new
intermediate schools built under the 1889
Intermediate Act, which applied to Wales alone.
Under the Act, the newly formed County
Councils were allowed to finance Secondary
Schools, and its successful operation influenced
the drafting of the 1902 Education Act, which set
up local education authorities.

The 1902 Act comes to the
rescue of church schools

By the end of the century, the need for a radical redefinition of the 1870
Act had become imperative. The main problems were the parlous
financial position of the voluntary schools, the untidy growth of secondary
education and the future of the School Boards. In 1900, the Tories were
returned with a massive majority, and the Education Bill of 1902
Proposed rate aid to voluntary schools and the replacement of School
Boards by County and County Borough Councils which had been

created in 1888.

One of a series of handbills setting out
objections to the Bill.

A massive Free Church demonstration against
rate aid for voluntary schools,

Education Bill Series—lv.

Why the Education
must be opposeamal

Because it destroys the

system of undenominational t=
in Board Schools.

Clause 27 of the Bill destroys THE
TEMPLE CLAUSE of the Act of 1870 wma
vided that in no Board School should thers
denominational teaching. Any denonina ==
be allowed to teach its dogmas, if it can
a “reasonable ’ number ot paren ae =
children may reccive such instruc }

Lord eAlebaiy: last year, told the Ch a
that what they had to do was "TO CAP oe
BOARD SCHOOLS.’ This Clause 27 is pu®
Bill to enable this to be done. ’

The parents. whose wishes alone havo
considered in this matter of religious jnst__—
have never shown any atseate a —
ett atop et are A jas
well for the last quarter of a cen &

Not only is its destruction not asked for
parents, but it is HIGHLY DISTASTEFU
TEACHERS. who have already strongly pre
against it. ; ; :

At present, though denominationalism a
taught, religious instruction is reveren =
reguwirly given in our Board Schools. yak =
this system be destroyed to allow one pa'

religious boy to “Capture the School

The birth of the
modern system

For the NUT the Balfour-Morant Act of
1902 was a moment of truth. It brought
teachers face to face with the decay of the
voluntary schools, and all the emotive
reactions summed up in the nonconformist
slogan about ‘putting Rome on the rates’;
it brought them up against the question of
how best to advance the education of the
working class, indeed to a decision on the
nature of education itself; and, by limiting
entry to the profession to the products of the
new ‘secondary’ system, it presented them
with a confict between their idealism for the
education of all children, and their desire to
enhance their own occupational status.

What was the Act of 1902 ? It was presented
as a Bill by A. J. Balfour, who became the
Conservative Prime Minister during the
debates; it was largely inspired by Robert
Morant, previously the educational adviser
to the King of Siam, whose ambitious and
conspiratorial character was recruited as
permanent secretary of the new Government
Board of Education, set up in 1899. The
first of three great Education Acts to be
produced by a Britain at war, it was also the
first comprehensive education Bill to reach
the Sratute Book. It abolished the School
Boards and turned the counties and county
boroughs into education authorities (though
smaller authorities were allowed power over
elementary schools); it clearly distinguished
between elementary and secondary schools
(though on a class basis as much as on an
educational one) and allowed authorities to
spend up to a 2d rate on secondary education;
it granted rate support for voluntary schools,
although leaving the voluntary bodies a clear
majority on the boards of managers; and it
laid the basis for a scholarship system for
potential elementary teachers at secondary
schools, a vast expansion in teacher training
colleges, and the demise of the pupil-teacher
system,

Introducing his Bill, Mr Balfour deployed
a number of arguments. He blamed the 1870
Act for embarrassing the voluntary schools,
and for creating a system of fiscally irres-
ponsible School Boards which handed over
rate demands to the local authorities which
the latter were then bound to pay. There
was no organisation for voluntary schools,
‘there was no sufficient provision for the education
of the great staff of teachers needed for our
national schools’,
and there was no rational connection between
Primary, secondary and university education.
It was Parliament’s duty to remedy
‘the insufficiency of the supply of secondary
education’,
to end the competition between county and
borough councils (responsible for technical
education under the 1889 Act) and the School
Boards in the secondary field, and to sort

Sir John Gorst

out the education of teachers.

‘Any child who wishes to become a teacher
gets made a pupil-teacher, and when he has
reached that status half his time goes to
teaching and the other half... to learning...
What is the result?... I find that 36 per
cent... have never got through the examina-
tion for the certificate, and that §§ per cent
of the existing teachers have never been to a
training college of any sort’, he said. He
argued that the country was not getting proper
value for the £18m spent annually on
elementary education while, in an appeal to
educationalists, he claimed that his proposals
would improve a_ situation which was
alarming many leaders of opinion: that
Britain was falling ‘behind all its Continental
and American rivals in the matter of educa-
tion’.

The factors which led to a general rearrange-
ment of the educational systern in 1902 were
varied, and somewhat contradictory. A
leading one, to a Conservative Government,
was naturally the desperate plight of the
Anglican voluntary schools. In 1897, following
the failure of an Education Act that would
have assisted voluntary schools and curbed
the School Boards, the Conservative Govern-
ment gave a free handout of over £600,000
to the necessitous voluntary schools. By 1902,
although these schools were still at a dis-
advantage, the skilful tactics of Sir John
Gorst, the Conservative Education Minister
had meant that they were already sub-
stantially supported by public funds; the
exchequer was bearing 77 per cent of the
cost, subscriptions produced 14 per cent, and
other sources of revenue the remaining 9 per
cent. To nonconformists, who reckoned that
up to half the children in Anglican voluntary
schools were in fact theirs, and to the Jabour
movement, this public support without
popular control or nonsectarian religion was a
continuing irritation.

But if the 1902 Act was a Conservative
answer to the problem of hard pressed
Anglican elementary schools, it was also a

Sir Robert Morant

A. J. Balfour

solution, backed by the Fabians, for the
confusion over schooling for teenagers. Here,
piecemeal and under the stimulus of differing
agencies, a great expansion was taking place.
In the elementary schools by the gos there
was a general trend towards staying on
beyond the age of 12; it was officially esti-
mated in 1893-4 that three-quarters of all
children aged 12 to 13 ‘of the class usually
found in public elementary schools’ were still
on the register; by 1894-5 there were over
50,000 youngsters over 14 who were still at
school.

Nurturing this early demonstration of a
recurring phenomenon — voluntary staying
on— were the large School Boards in parti-
cular and their elementary teachers. Much of
the demand was met by growing ‘higher tops’
to the conventional elementary schools,
classes which allowed both the pupils and the
teachers to develop more interesting work.
But in the 80s and gos, particularly in the
north of England, a number of ‘higher grade
schools’, often called central schools, were
set up by the Boards. Their special forte
was science, technology and language
teaching. The Royal Commission on
Technical Instruction, which reported in
1884 when worries about the lag of British
industry were already growing, found the
work of these pioneer schools to be praise-
worthy. ‘This higher grade school represents
a new educational movement from below,
and a demand from new classes of the
population for secondary education which
has sprung up in a few years’, commented an
assistant commissioner to the Bryce Com-
mission in 1895.

However the Cross Commission in the
previous decade had expressed hostility to
the higher grade schools, largely because they
were seen as a threat to the middle and upper
classes, and the Bryce Commission, by
recommending that there should be a distinct
pattern of secondary education which counties
and county boroughs should provide, helped
to undermine both this growth and the

45 . —

School Boards. One of the main supports
for the higher grade schools and the higher
tops had been the special grants available
from the Science and Art Department in
South Kensington which had been earmarked
for ‘the industrial classes’. But in the late 90s,
as part of the strategy developed by Sir John
Gorst and Robert Morant to limit the Boards
and the upward movement of the elementary

The Union's strike headquarters at West Ham.
The poster announcing that qualified teachers
were wanted outside West Ham illustrates a
trump card played by the NUT.

system, Science and Art grants had to be
paid via counties and county boroughs.

Since 1889 the counties and county
boroughs had become responsible for higher
technical education and since the following
year, in an inspiring example of how Victorian
administrators could distil virtue out of vice,
some three-quarters of a million pounds of
‘whisky money’ (resulting from the Local
Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act) became
available to these authorities annually. Though
the first charge of ‘whisky money’ was to
pay for pensions for policemen it was also
designed to forward technical education; in
Practice substantial sums were paid over for
the rescue of endowed schools, especially the
ancient but unimproved grammar schools,
and they played a crucial part in restoring
their fortunes. This mutual support between
the county authorities and the grammar
schools helps to explain the direction of
Policy for secondary education after 1902

when the former won sole responsibility.
The revival of that somnolent group of
pra ar schools which had not sailed away
come acknowledged public schools may
date from the activities of the Endowed
Commission, which overhauled

charters and hinted that some curricula were
in need of revision in the 1870s. But in the
late 19th century there was much fear in
these schools that the higher grade schools,
with their modern outlook and firm rate
support, were underselling them. Grammar
school teachers felt the need to organise and
in 1890 the Headmasters Association was
formed to fight for a genuine secondary
school system; it fought the higher grade
schools and inevitably came into conflict
with the NUT. (The class difference in the
two types of school was neatly shown by a
return in 1897 which recorded that 91-2 per
cent of higher grade school pupils came from
elementary schools, compared with 48°9 per
cent of grammar school pupils; over a third
of the higher grade group were the children of
manual workers while only 6-8 per cent of
the grammar children were.)

Long before the 1902 Act, or the significant
Liberal amending Act of 1907 which required
rate aided secondary schools to offer 25 per
cent of free places to the local authority, some
counties were already obtaining scholarship
places at grammar schools. One of the keenest
to do so was Sidney Webb, who as chairman
of the London County Council’s technical
education board envisaged an educational
‘ladder’ linking the elementary school to
the university. He talked about his ‘capacity
catching machine’~not such a different
concept from the ‘pool of ability’ theory that
informed the Robbins Report in the 1960s —
and the resultant competition among clemen-
tary London schoolchildren for grammar
places makes it possible to regard Webb as
one of the fathers of the eleven plus. But this
elitist view, to which he converted the
Fabian Society, was always anathema in
broader reaches of the labour movement.

The final clearing of the ground for the
1902 Act was achieved in 1899 and 1900 by
adroit moves by Gorst and Morant. Morant
conceived that the swelling extension of
School Board activities might have no legal
basis and in June, 1899, with certain en-
couragement from the Government and
officers of the London County Council, the
North London School of Art, complaining
of competition from evening classes run by
the London School Board brought a case
against it. Named after Cockerton, the
district auditor who disallowed spending
from the rates by the School Board on science
and art schools or classes, the final judgment
on appeal stated that a School Board had
no right to spend any portion of the school
fund on education that came under the

Science and Art Department.

Meantime, before the appeal was finally
settled, the Board of Education had shown
its hand by a Minute on higher education
which severely circumscribed the growth of
higher grade schools and ‘higher tops’. First
a strict upper age limit of 15 was imposed on
elementary schools; second only a selection of
the existing higher grade schools would be
recognised by the Board as ‘higher elemen-
tary’ schools; third, these would be confined
to a narrow range of pupils, subjects and
equipment; fourth, they should not contain
pupils who ‘ought to have gone’ to endowed
secondary schools; and fifth, they would have
fo steer a middle line in curriculum and

equipment between normal elementa=
schools and other secondary schools. —
retrospect this Minute looks like a charter —
secondary modern schools.

What then were the secondary schools f=
which the 1902 Act was to give such 2—
enormous stimulus? Above all, were the
‘secondary’ in the mid 2oth century idiom
separated from schools for younger childres=
by age of entry, or were they “secondary
because they offered a different but paralle=
instruction to ‘elementary’ schools? There
was a confusion here from the start but the=
fact that the second attitude had as strong=
an influence in the administration of the
Act as the first helps to explain the lasting
association of grammar schools, the paragons
of 1902, with the idea of an exclusive middle
class education. The 1904 regulations for
secondary schools laid stress on a general
education for the 12-16 age group as being
the hallmark of such a school, though it
accepted that entry could occur at eight or
even earlier.

The administrative action of the Board, in
the critical ycars before 1906 when the
Liberals were returned to office, helped to
shore up secondary schools as a system of
class education from which working class
children were broadly excluded. It insisted
on a minimum fee of £3 a year — in 1907 the
president of the NUT observed that 607
schools were charging more than £3 and that
only four were completely free—and, in
cooperation with the new local authorities,
it ensured that only a trivial number of the
higher grade schools were approved as
‘higher elementary’ schools. (Although the
grammar schools were the prototypes of the
new system of secondary education it is
interesting that the 1904 regulations already
held the germ of that distinction between
grammar and other secondary schools which
would be the next line of defence for elitists
when popular demand for a post elementary
education became too strong: ‘Secondary
schools are of different types, suited to the
different requirements of the scholars, to
their place in the social organisation, and to
the means of the parents and the age at which
the regular education of the scholars is
obliged to stop short, as well as to the occupa-
tions and opportunities of development to
which they may or should look forward in
later life’.)

This indicates what a difficult challenge the
1902 scheme for secondary schooling pre-
sented to the elementary teachers. The
problem was compounded because it was
intimately bound up with their status and
their own training. From one angle the
demand for a coordinated system of secondary
schools was a tribute to their success in the
elementary schools; but if the result was 0
impose a network of publicly subsidised
schools on top of theirs, in which they were
kept from teaching, it brought them n¢
benefit. They also had a direct stake in the
secondary field in the pupil-teacher centres
that had grown up to provide some furthet
education for intending teachers; in the even!
many were converted into orthodox secondary
schools,

Status had been a sore point with the
elementary teachers ever since the profession

had been brought into being in the 1840s.
They had been the butt of resentment from
members of the old middle class — there were
jokes about their ‘over education’ — and they
had the insecure feeling of not knowing quite
where they were in class-conscious Victorian
England. By the turn of the century this
insecurity was probably diminished, thanks
in part to the strength and bargaining power

He had to be different! A class of infants in 1908
modelling a bird's nest. Their efforts appear
somewhat repetitive today, but it was a real
advance on earlier methods.

of the union. With figures like James Yoxall
and T. J. Macnamara in the eye of the
general public there could be little doubt of
the calibre of the leading teachers.

Nevertheless they still felt shortcomings in
their own level of education. ‘The organised
thousands of the National Union of Teachers
have aspirations toward that high intellectual
plane which has come to be embodied in one
word — “‘culture”’, said the president of the
Union, James Blacker, in rgor. In this, and in
their yearning for the respectability of the
profession, they fell in with the desires of
establishment educationalists since Matthew
Arnold who had seen education as an
instrument for humanising, and taming, the
working classes. But by accepting a cut in the
new humanist middle class secondary educa-
tion were they not also denigrating the
developing technical and other education of
their own higher grade schools? (Round the
turn of the century, it must be remembered,
British industrialists were bewailing the
relatively poor technical training the majority
of youngsters had had, and offices were even
importing German clerks.)

Swirling about the 1902 Act then were
controversies which in differing forms would
persist long into the twentieth century. They
turned on the meaning of education, in
almost the same way as one may argue now
about the meaning of higher education as
applied to both Oxford and a polytechnic.
They tied in with attitudes to the training of
teachers ~ for while the elementary teachers
laughed at the untrained teachers in grammar

schools, the latter sneered at the former’s
illiberal education. They concerned the best
way to achieve an educational advance in
the general population; given prevailing
social attitudes and willingness to pay, was it
better to put middle class schooling on a sound
footing for the first time and then widen the
access of other children, or should there be
continuous piecemeal progress for all

children? The teachers were being offered
half a loaf or no bread, a choice that would
become increasingly familiar.

The storm over the 1902 Act can scarcely
be imagined now. Piloted by the incoming
Prime Minister it was debated in the Com-
mons for 57 days, the debates spanning the
conclusion of peace in the Boer War, and the
‘pro Boer’, David Lloyd George used his
considerable oratorical powers to castigate
the Bill as a means of ‘riveting the clerical
yoke on thousands of parishes in England’.
(His threat of passive resistance was in fact
carried out by a subsequent refusal of some
Welsh Nonconformists to pay that part of
their rates which they calculated would go to
Anglican schools.) The Nonconformists held
monster rallies, Labour speakers addressed
huge meetings, and a Radical Baptist cap-
tured a traditional Conservative constituency
in Leeds after fighting a by-election entirely
on the education issue.

The Union, with its MP representatives,
was in the thick of the fight. On the issue that
bulked largest at the time, the rate aid to
church schools, the union, with its roots in
the 1870 compromise, took a commonsense
attitude. Its stand was that for the sake of the
children and the teachers the country could
not afford to go on permitting the standards
in half its schools to be so markedly inferior
to the rest; for this it was bitterly attacked by
the extreme nonconformists. Over the
abolition of the School Boards, some of
which had served teachers so well, the union
had regrets. It would have preferred an ad hoc
authority, over which it could gain more
influence, but it recognised the administrative
simplicity of a bigger all-in authority. Along
with the Liberals and the Labour movement
it was determined that a majority of members
of the education committees should be

answerable to the electorate; it was James
Yoxall, during the report stage of the Bill,
who moved a successful amendment that,
except in the case of a county council, the
committees should contain a majority of
members who were also members of the
local council.

The Union helped to get the Bill amended
so that the age for possible attendances at
day schools was raised from 1§ to 16 and the
rate limit of 2d in the £ for higher education
was removed for county boroughs —a con-
cession which gave crucial aid to the expansion
of civic secondary schools. The Union got
promises of an end to extraneous duties, of
more help for the training of non-Anglicans
who wished to be teachers, and had a clause
inserted in the Bill which enabled local
authorities to spend money on the training of
teachers. Perhaps of most direct satisfaction,
and the product of carefully planned lobbying,
was the passage of an amendment protecting
teachers in voluntary schools. This required
that ‘the consent of the Authority shall also
be required to the dismissal of a teacher
unless the dismissal be on grounds connected
with the giving of religious instruction in the
school’; this was a major safeguard and put
an end to the tyranny of rural parsons and
others.

The Union, which had helped to kill the
first education Bill of the Conservatives in
1896 when it became obvious that it involved
religious tests on Board school teachers,
was moderately happy with the 1902 Act
by the time it was passed. In their pleasure
at a solution to the difficulties of the voluntary
schools, and their delight at the appearance
of a unified educational structure, the teachers
seem to have underrated the elitist and
hostile attitude that animated Morant’s
Board. While the Union looked forward to a
unified teaching profession for all types of
school and no distinctions between the
education of a middle- and working-class
child-an outlook which brought it the
help of the organised Labour movement — the
actions of the Board and the new authorities
made it very difficult for elementary teachers
to teach in secondary schools, or for working
class children to learn in them. (At least
until the chink opened by the 1907 free place
requirement.)

However the Union saw what was
happening quickly enough afterwards, and
accused the Board of ‘thwarting and hindering
the higher educational interests of the
children of the working classes’! It inveighed
against the narrowing of the curricula in the
higher elementary schools, and the Board's
encouragement of fees in the secondary
schools. (Not the least in the factors making
for disiliusionment was the snobbery that
working class scholarship holders and inten-
ding teachers came up against in the grammar
schools.) But Morant had done his work well—
though like Forster in an earlier generation
he would have been shattered by the expense
to which his proposals gave rise — and within
five years the union had abandoned all hopes
for the higher elementary schools, and for
the professional and technical education to
which they had pointed. It was forced to
press for an extension of scholarships in
grammar schools, and an end to the fees,

The turn of the century

In 1899, the educational functions of the central government were unified
in the Board of Education under a single Minister, the President. The
1902 Act achieved the same sort of rationalisation at local level. For the
first time, elementary and higher education were brought together

under the control of the new local education authorities.

With 30 odd years of experience behind it, the Union was in a strong
position to bargain with the untried local authorities. It drew up a

union scale for certificated teachers and developed sophisticated
techniques for dealing with recalcitrant authorities. But the policy of
strict delimitation between elementary and secondary schools,

originating from the Board of Education, bore harshly on Union members.
Paradoxically, the secondary teachers themselves felt the bureaucratic

rein tighten and a rapprochement took place between the two groups.

A Teacher’s Register in 1912 embracing elementary and secondary
teachers was a first step towards a united profession. The Union began to
wield greater influence at national and local level than ever before.

1. Drill was a prominent feature of the
curriculum at the turn of the century.

Union fights selection
for grammar schools

“Secondary education for all’ had been a Union ideal from 1870. Their
hopes that the 1902 Act might go some way towards realising it were
not fulfilled. Under Sir Robert Morant as Permanent Secretary, the
Board pursued a policy of confining elementary education within clear
limits and building up a co-ordinated system of secondary education for
an elite in the grammar school tradition. Scholarships formed the only
link between elementary and secondary schools. The NUT accused the
Board of organising a ‘system of secondary education for the middle-
class apart.’ In effect, a three-tier system had come into being:
Independent public and grammar schools; new local authority day
grammar schools, largely fee-paying and taking children from 7 or 8;
and free elementary schools.

The Union was forced to devote its energies to pressing for more
scholarships and more grammar schools. In 1907, all secondary schools
receiving grants were compelled to provide free places for 25 per cent of

their annual entry, and 11 plus became gradually accepted as the age when

elementary pupils should sit the scholarship examinations. As Tawney
put it: ‘the free place system made a break, if a small one, in the walls of
educational exclusiveness.’

secon Zz nie ae
rrr ia

ca?

“ns

and day and evening continuation schools.
The Board made great efforts to ensure that

2. The headmaster reads a summary of
the life of Captaln Scott to pupils at the Hugh

Myddelton School in London, which was shared
by an elementary school and a central school.
Central schools developed in London and the
North as one of the types of ‘lower secondary
schools’ recognised by the Board of Education
for children who would ‘earn their living in the
lower ranks of commerce and Industry.’ Others
were junior technical schools, trade schools,

they did not compete with the secondary
schools proper.

3. A cartoon from The Sun in 1895 depicts

the ‘capacity-catching’ system ploneered in
London by Sydney Webb. It strongly influenced
the developments of national policy after 1902.
Webb succeeded In detaching the Fabians

—" {mportant to Wiitshire Ratepayers! .

~

Secondary Education ,/
nfVilts.

Both Sides of the Question at
a Public Meeting held
at-Melksham, Oct. roth, 1907.

—-

MIR. D. G. WILSOR RUMSEY
(Hon. Secreury Wilts Caunty Federation of Rate- .
payers’ Associations) acd ,
_ MAR. E. L. ANSTIE ~
(Chairman of the Wilts General Education Commitica}.

4 issued sxécr the acspices of the
Witrs Cousty Federatian of Ratepayers’ Associations. _

5 Specialy from Verbatim Repart of

> “The Devizes and Wiltshire Gacette,~
P Octaber 17, 1907.
ret el ey Coe Oe On ee

ate k stl

4
¥

= eR ~ 44

4. Financial considerations played a large

part in deciding secondary school policy at
national and local level. The Wiltshire
ratepayers wanted fees at the county secondary
schools to go up from 5 guineas to 7 quineas a
year. Their spokesman, Mr. Rumsey, was not
entirely disinterested; a private schoolmaster,
he foresaw the ‘gradual extinction of private
schools’ by unfair competition. The Wiltshire
schools took in an unusually high proportion
of ex-elementary pupils.

pormaeraen\

Uys

from the main body of the Labour movement

to support Tory policy on secondary schools.
‘Free-placers' were mainly from the lower
middle-class, and as a group they stayed on
longer and achieved better results than the — SS
fee-paying pupils. : :

= i 1

vision of education widens

The great majority of children attended only an elementary school and
left at 12. The elementary school was treated as the poor relation of the
secondary school; for example, a teacher-pupil ratio of 1 : 50 was
allowed compared with 1 : 17 for the secondary school. But in the 1904
Code the Board outlined a remarkably liberal philosopy for elementary
schools, and the pupils received a wider and better education than in the
19th century. The last vestiges of payment by results were swept away,

leaving teachers with considerable freedom to decide what to teach in
their classrooms.

1. ‘An intelligent acquaintance with some ;
of the facts and laws of nature’ was specified in
the Cade. This science room was in the
Aristotle Road Schoal in London.

2. A laundry class at Tennyson Elementary
School, which is now used by the Inner
London Educational Television Service.

3. The manual training centre at Green Lane
School in Bradford, one of the last schools to b
built by the Bradford Board, and very well-
equipped. The Cade sald that schools should
‘encourage to the utmost the children’s natural
activities of hand and eye’.

The present headmaster of Green Lane
Schoo! Is Harry Dawson, past president of the

Union, It Is one of the schools most concerned,
with immigrants.

4. A gallery class at a Bradford School.
Teachers still had to cope with overcrowded
conditions.

5. A lesson in natural history at the Albion

Street elementary school in London, now the
Albion primary school. The design of schools
had changed from the 19th century pattern of

one long room divided by movable partitionsto _
individual classrooms leading off a central hail.
We are now moving back to the idea of
open-space schools made up of flexible

teaching areas.

6. These children certainly seemed happy
at the Hugh Myddelton School. They were
celebrating Empire Day in 1913.

County secondary schools follow
the grammar school tradition

The 1904 Regulations for Secondary Schools spelt out the distinction
between elementary and secondary education and decided that the new
state secondary schools should follow the path blazed by the grammar and
public schools. They were to provide, for a minimum of four years,

‘a complete graded course of instruction of wider scope and more
advanced degree than that given in elementary schools’. The Regulations
carefully laid down the proportion of timetable hours which were to be
alloted to different groups of subjects, but this attempt to dictate to

the schools was dropped in 1907. In secondary schools as in elementary
schools, teachers were allowed to decide the contents of the curriculum
within the limits of the Code.

Under the Code, county secondary schools provided an academic
education based slightly in favour of literary studies and decidedly in
favour of the few who would go on to university. Sixth form studies
developed as the most typical and successful aspect. In 1917, the
universities were recognised as the proper bodies to run external

examinations for the schools and the School Certificate Examination
was born.

yNWERSICg
successes

Pere |

agucke

“habe?

el

1. The Honours Board at Latymer School,
Hammersmith, shows that university entrance
was the principal goal. Founded in 1624,
Latymer was one of the independent grammar
schools which accepted LEA aid in return for
conforming to the Code and taking free pupils.
In 1926, it was one of 250 aided schools which
opted for a capitation grant direct from the
Board and thus became a direct-grant school.

2, The art room in Strand School, at Elm Parkin
London. ‘Drawing’ was given special :
prominence in the 1904 Code but the emphasis
was on technical proficiency rather than on
artistic imagination. Betore it became a
secondary school for boys in 1913, Strand
School had been a department of King's
College, London. Itis still a county grammar
school for boys.

3,°,
&

»
4
'

ald

3. The importance attached to drill and
physical training at this time owed much to the
example of the Scandinavian countries, These
girls, from Brondesbury and Kilburn High
School, were taking part in a ‘Swedish drill’
competition. Teachers were brought from
Sweden to spread the art.

4. A classroom at Fulham County Secondary
School for girls, founded in 1905. Secondary
education for girls had been pioneered by

the Girls’ Public Day School Trust in the second
half of the 19th century and was expanded by
the LEAs after 1902. The small class with
individual desks is in sharp contrast to the
over-crowded elementary schools.

5. Another girls' county secondary school at
Clapham. Secondary schools were almost
always single-sex, although there were few
differences between the education provided for
girls and boys. As this picture shows,
segregation had its drawbacks.

6. The cadet battalion at Hackney Downs
Secondary School in 1911, an endowed grammar

school taken over by the LCC. Today It is In

The pupil-teacher system declines

The Board’s policy on teacher recruitment was to educate future
teachers at secondary schools, a development distrusted by the Union.
Pupil-teacher centres were gradually closed and local authorities paid
bursaries to pupils at secondary schools who intended to train as
teachers. The minimum age for pupil-teacher apprenticeships was
raised to 16. The initial result was a drop in the number coming into the
profession but it was an important move in the improvement of training.
At first, student teachers were regarded as a separate and lowly group in
secondary schools but they gradually became integrated and indeed were
an important ingredient in the new sixth forms.

Twenty LEAs took advantage of their powers in the 1902 Act to build
training colleges. An unfortunate result of the Board’s policy of
containing elementary education was that colleges were discouraged from
operating three-year courses to include an external degree. The
day-training colleges continued to offer four-year courses, and they also
began to provide Diplomas in Education as professional training for
graduates intending to teach in secondary schools.

Choi

snd eacNeT:

) ae aS
© ic}

a Slational

be This isto: 5: Coitifp

Uhil poseph ral Cee
Having dali yfeed« lhe Ea ead

wn lhe Clomentary’ SE

1G Id :

Leapster VE. 24.25

1. A group picture taken in 1907 of all the staff
and students of the University College of
Nottingham, now the University of Nottingham.
Among the student teachers at the day-training
college was D. H. Lawrence (standing at the
end of the second-back row, on the right). He
had been a scholarship boy at Nottingham High
School and had also served as a pupil-teacher
at Eastwood. Leaving Nottingham with his
teacher's certificate but no degree, he taught in
Davidson's Road School in Croydon until he
left to become a full-time writer. He was a
member of the NUT in 1910.

2. A cookery class at the Elizabeth Gaskell
College, Manchester. This college was one of
the earliest to train specialist teachers. It was
begun in 1880 as a training school for cookery
and laundrywork and was taken over by the
Manchester Education Committee in 1906.

3. A certificate issued by the NUT Examinations
Board. An early aim of the Union had been for
the teaching profession to be recognised as a
diploma-granting authority, and the Board was
set up in 1895 as a first step towards it. At first
it was mainly concerned with tutorial
examinations for pupil-teachers, then with
commercial and handicraft examinations for
part-time students. Many overseas students
used the facilities. It was wound up in 1936
when it became apparent that the growth of
other examinations left little scope.

Aftermath of the 1902 Act
and the Great War

so the Seat decade of the cow cemeusy the
Breré cf Edcoaticn. for eccd oc i,
Ctere emeeey Cucesesd with setting ap 2
Coane henaite aeteuek cf seocedary chook.
Feo sc2@eee, Selidees 2-2

wee these sco were gecesi

wat gssToSis

Wat

ote asats
othe: cyte

Sr Soma wee tke cdememerry
to the mernabl+ exmcrence of mech:
farses, Neverizeden:

Es cated

etocmionel work of the slemecte

Sel raw

wes Concerned 5 it this period.

some of the Sos surrices of

aad jal: coSd ceaned

even — which. built on by later generations of
aiemt and skilful teachers, were to make

Briush primary teaching of the Plowden era
the ensy of the word.

One of the prides of education at this time
was the quality of work in infant schools.
In 1895, 10 the shame of 1970, there were
over 692,000 children of three and four in
school or neariy half the age group. The
infants had scarcely been touched by the
restrictions of payment by results and their
teaching lent inspiration to the efforts of
teachers of older children when they were
able to stretch their imaginations more freely.
Even before the tum of the century HMIs
had been commenting favourably on develop-
ments for infants. ‘All the good teachers
have more or less adopted the kindergarien
method’, wrote one. ‘There is a visible and
decided advance in the teaching and bad
styles are disappearing, such as counting on
the fingers and unnatural sing song. The
old time formal methods, abstract and verbal,
have been discarded and superseded by the
real practical, vivid and concrete’, stated
another. With singing, handwork, games and
dancing, the infant classes at the turn of the
century were surprisingly modern in outlook.

In the first two decades of this century
this fresher approach seems gradually to
have spread to the older elementary children.
Sums were made to reproduce calculations
that they would really have had to make,
perhaps of annual wages or a weekly milk
bill, rather than the Biblical computations
that appeared in some Victorian textbooks.

Practical subjects gathered pace too; in 1902
special grants were given for the first time
for cookery, laundrywork, dairywork, house-
hold management, manual instruction, cottage
gardening and even for cookery for boys,
in the seaport towns. The code of 1902 also
for the first time authorised educational visits,
2 valuable breakthrough for deprived urban
children. By the Fisher Act of 1918 the
suffocatingly punitive regimes engendered by
Payment by results— 19th century ads in
The Schoolmaster used to stress that ‘dis-
Ciplinarians’ were wanted — were beginning
to give ground. But elementary teachers were

Teese veers. I

to form and stren

deveiop the int

liigence of children
entrusted to it, and to meke the Dest use of the

schoo] years available, in assisting both girls
and boys, according to their different needs,
to ft themselves, practically as well as
intellectually, for the work o7 life’, it began.
Its conclusion looked forward to Plowden:
‘In all these endeavours the School should
enlist, as far as possible, the interest and
cooperation of the parents and the home in
an united effort to enable the children not
merely to reach their full development as

In 1911 a wave of strikes by pupils in elementary
schools hit the headlines. It was triggered off by
an incident in Llanelli, when pupils paraded the
streets demanding shorter school hours and an
end to corporal punishment. Further outbreaks
occurred in Liverpool, London and Manchester.

:t passed an
sities to feed neces-
- had glaringly
-cencies of urban
ct was passed that

ap a medical
inspection system for sci s. though medical
treatment emmitted in 1912. In
both these cases ere Jong struggles to
obiain permissive legislation followed by
loca] battles to get councils

was omy >
e

tO act ON It.

In 1911 a Bill by the Liberal Government
to raise the leaving age from 12 10 13 and
to abolish the surviving half-time system
fell a casualty to the war over the House of

The Schoolmaster had no hesitation in blaming
the sensational press for spreading it. Itis not
too fanciful to see these minor incidents as
part of the general social unrest in the years
before 1914.

Lords; the Bill would have enabled children
to choose between staying on until they were
14, and taking continuation classes until
they were 16. These proposals lay dormant
until they were revived by H. A.L. Fisher in
1917-18. In all the period between the Acts
of 1902 and 1918 the union of course favoured
an extended length of schooling, and lent
its weight to the improvement of social
conditions for children. (Even before local
authorities would own any responsibility,
teachers like the famous Mrs Burgwin, out of
their own money and time, were giving food
and clothing to the children who
suffering most.)

were

But the first years of the century cannot be
understood except by reference to the
extraordinary breakdown of confidence that
occurred between the union and Morant’s

Board. Probably ut no time since have
relations between such large group of
teachers and the Gove nt agency res-

ponsible for direct
bitter. Morant, «
also ruthless and

orts become so
zt he was, was
a his personal

dealings. The ters on -h he was con-
structing seconda j n, his policy of
filling the Board and Inspectorate with

public school and Oxbridge men, and his
policy of restricting elementary education
and designing it as inferior, led to a campaign
against him personally by the union which
finally drove from the Permanent
Secretaryship, along with his Minister,
Walter Runciman, in 1911. In that year The
Schoolmaster commented, ‘We do not wish
to gag civil servants... but some of them
must learn to be more open minded, less
haughtily prejudiced, more patient, more
accessible to argument, less class conscious,
and less cocksure than some of them have
been’. Although the Union’s victory could not
lead to a secondary education for all overnight
it was as significant in its way as the successful
struggle against payment by results.

The years before the outbreak of the First
World War were filled with growing industrial
unrest-— the House of Lords reform had
almost revolutionary overtones—and the
spirit of the times was reflected in the union.
In 1907 the NUT published a pamphlet,
Higher Education and the People’s Children
which was subtitled ‘An Appeal to the People
against the policy of the Secondary Schools’
Branch of the Board of Education’. In
rejecting the official ‘Report of the Consul-
tative Committee upon Higher Elementary
Schools’ - which deprecated existing higher
elementary schools for ‘too broad and too
ambitious educational aims’ and envisaged
some narrow ‘lower’ secondary schooling for
working class children — the general secretary,
James Yoxall, called for a ‘crusade’ along
with the leaders of the working classes. The
Union should ‘march to the conquest of a
stronghold of class prejudice in the Secondary
Branch of the Board of Education’. At this
time the NUT was cooperating closely with
the TUC; in 1905 the Congress had passed
a resolution in ringing tones. ‘This Congress
condemns the educational policy of the
government as laid down in the Act of 1902,
and in all subsequently issued Minutes and
Regulations and demands the formulation of
an educational programme based upon the

him

principle of equal opportunities for all’, it
stated.

Other issues between the teachers and the
Board involved entry into and regulation of
the profession. In July 1903 the Board issued
new pupil-teacher regulations by which
intending teachers should not be employed
to teach in elementary schools until they
were 16 or 17, so that they might have a better
secondary education; when they did become
pupil-teachers firm limits were imposed on
their teaching so that they could continue
taking lessons. The Board acknowledged that
there would be a ‘class problem’ for the
pupil-teachers in secondary schools, and in
fact some schools made invidious distinctions
between pupil-teachers and other pupils,
even to the extent of providing separate
playgrounds. But the new ‘bursar’ system
encouraged by the Board resulted in a sharp
fall in the number of entrants to the pro-
fession, largely because of the delay in wage
earning and the strain on a working class
family budget that was entailed.

The union opposed the death of the pupil-
teachers and the pupil-teacher centres partly,
perhaps, out of conservatism and partly
because members feared that though the
new recruits might be better educated they
would be less good at teaching. A feature of
secondary school teachers which they dis-
trusted was being foisted on the elementary
schools. At the same time, due to the expan-
sion of training colleges, they also had periodic
anxieties that the larger number of certificated
teachers who might mow be thrown on the
market at one time were not getting jobs.
After 1909 the Union was actually dissuading
entrants to the profession and there were
clashes with the Board over the size of the
unemployment problem.

But the essential ambiguity over education
for teaching which was to dog both the union
and teacher education -ought teachers to
have a general education or a professional
training ? - led to another fight with Morant's
Board. Busy demarcating the colleges’ work
so that it would provide a profession at
training alone, the Board’s administrative
action made it next to impossible for a
trainee teacher to get a degree. Up till 1902
there had been an increasing stream of
students who had read for university degrees
at their college and the union had looked
forward to a time when a degree would have
been part of the usual equipment of a
teacher; this, obviously, would have been a
major contribution to unifying the profession
of teaching in elementary and secondary
schools. In this quarrel the Union joined
forces with the Association of Training College
Principals and Lecturers and although in I911
the Board recognised training departments
attached to universities which might prepare
teachers for the elementary schools the
substantive issue, a fair chance for all teachers
to take a degree, would remain unfinished
business into the 1960s.

On another matter, which would also leave
a legacy into the 1960s, the Union was able
to surmount mutual differences in a joint
campaign against the Board. This was over a
Teachers’ Registration Council, ghostly
ancestor to Mr Short’s Teachers’ General
Council. Getting Parliament to enact that

there should be a Council had been a success
of the union in 1899. But instead of the single
alphabetical list implied by the Act an Order
in Council prescribed that there should be a
double columned list, one for those who
could teach in clementary schools, the
second for those who had already taught in
secondary schools. The NUT campaigned

against this divisive ‘caste’ register, the

Hamilton House, which was opened as the
Union's headquarters in 1913.

Board, which disliked the Act which had
established it, ignored it. Fundless and
friendless the Council was nearly wiped out
by the Board in 1907 but a new alliance
between the union and secondary teachers,
including the HMA, fought for a revived
Council on the basis of a single column
register. In 1911 the teachers, combined at
last, got Morant to accept a new Council,
although it could not compel registration and
was less powerful than was hoped.

Morant’s downfall from the Board occurred
in an unexpected fashion. It resulted from a
press leak of a memorandum to HMIs which
called their attention to the bad effects of
appointing ill equipped and narrow minded
people to be local authority inspectors. In
principle, of course, it had always been the
aim of teachers to open all inspectorial
positions to promoted teachers and they were
glad that many School Boards had done so.
Many of these inspectors were subsequently
taken over by the new local authorities and
formed the target of what was to be known
as the Holmes Morant Circular. But in
practice there had been some friction between
working teachers and just this type of local
inspector; the inquiry that lead to the
memorandum seems to have arisen out of a
complaint by James Yoxall to Mr E. G. AL
Holmes, the chief inspector for elementary

schools, that certain local
trying tO reimpose a vic
examinations.

inspectors were
ious system of

However in the anti Morant atmosphere of
1911 the leaked Memorandum became a
banner which united several groups with the
union in a sustained attack on the class
Prejudice and undemocratic composition of
the Board’s officials. The Conservatives, in
Opposition, used the issue to embarrass the
Liberal Government. Members of the Liberal
Party, uncomfortable about the reactionary
policies of the Board, or angry at its unavenged
destruction of the old School Boards, joined
in the furore. Members of the Union and
speakers from the civil service unions
addressed a large meeting at the Albert Hall
on May 13, 1911 at which demands were
made for the general opening up of the higher
civil service to talents from all parts of the
population. Runciman, the President of the
Board who told the Commons that there had
never been such a circular, was forced out of
office; Morant, who had been knighted in

1907, was transferred to work on Lloyd

George’s new insurance scheme in November.

Although the local authorities that were
administering education after 1902 did not
always do their job as the Union would have
wished their arrival, more powerful than the

School Boards or voluntary managers, pro-

vided the Union with a golden opportunity

to improve teachers’ salaries. This it eagerly
took, by formulating a standard scale of
salaries for certificated teachers in elementary
schools, by paying the removal expenses of
underpaid teachers in rural areas, and by
striking, or threatening to strike, against
recalcitrant authorities. The first teachers’
strike had been in Portsmouth in 1896. In

1907 there was a major confrontation with
West Ham Council in which the withdrawal
of teachers from the schools was accompanied
by an appeal to the West Ham public; the
borough, which had been trying to cut
teacher salaries, was made to come to terms.

In 1913, when a rising cost of living hit
teachers and was causing unrest among
manual workers, the NUT launched an

agitation to get a national salary scale. It also
joined other teacher bodies to seek earmarked
grants to local authorities which could be
devoted to the improvement of staffing
ratios and the raising of salaries. In 1914 the
union closed 60 schools in Herefordshire
when the county refused to introduce a single
scale for its teachers. It was a formidable
demonstration of the union’s power and
caused some resentment. But after mediation
by the Bishop of Hereford the county
agreed to a satisfactory scale.

Immediately after the outbreak of the 1914
war the union halted its salaries campaign,
which had obtained improvements in almost
half the local authority areas. Throughout the
war the union tried to maintain ‘education
as usual’, though events made this scarcely
possible. Over half the men teachers went
into the forces — the resentments of some who
returned would be capitalised to start the
National Association of Schoolmasters on its
stormy career—and in their place retired
teachers, married women who had been
teachers and even clergymen were pressed
into service. The Union, which joined the
Labour Party, the General Federation of
Trade Unions and the Cooperative Union in
a ‘War Emergency Workers’ National Com-
mittee’ fought against dilution of the pro-
fession and tried to head off panicky local
authorities which felt a patriotic call to make
educational economies.

By 1916, the year of the Somme, it was
quite obvious that the union’s laudable self
restraint over salaries no longer fitted the
facts and there was growing impatience
among local associations. War bonuses and
the shortage of labour were improving
earnings generally; one of the educational
effects was a noteworthy increase in the
number of children whose parents could
afford to let them stay beyond the normal
leaving age. At the same time the Board,
anxious about staffing trends, was converted
to the view that there had to be a substantial
improvement in salaries. In October 1916 the
Union executive resolved to ‘initiate and
develop a national movement to secure an

immediate and _ substantial increase
salaries’. In May 1917 H. A. L. Fishers
President of the Board, said that he cont¢——
plated using the Board’s new powers
prescribe a minimum salary of £100 ——=
certificated men teachers, £90 for certifica-———
women, and £65 for uncertificated wom
From then on, with the Board committ="
to intervention, there was a wave of strik——=
among teachers from 1917 to 1919; the st2aaaml
was sect for the establishment of the Bumha==
negotiating machinery.

The First World War, like the Boer W=
and the Second World War, providcd tam
common idealism and a national interest {@=
the general improvement of the education
system. The fact that teachers themselve——
benefited from this — Fisher put through =
valuable Superannuation Act in 1918 - was
almost incidental as far as the public was
concerned. Lloyd George, looking forwardill
to a ‘land fit for } ipplauded the ideaum
of a new Educa: A H. A. L. Fisher po
who brought forward the i918 measure which
ensured a scho age of 14 (thus
abolishing the ha! tem) and reformed
the grants systen as cheered by a mass
meeting of Bristol dockers mn the course of a
speaking tour to rz :nthusiasm for his Bill.
Unhappily, compared with either 1902 oF
1944, the Fisher Act was to do little for
Britain’s children.

By 1918 the union had a membership of
Over 100,000; a significant decision by the
1919 conference to let in uncertificated
teachers ~ in reality the triumph of certificated
teachers in their own profession — added a
further 11,000. After half a century there
was still much that was wrong with British
education: elementary schools left a lot to be
desired, the organisation of secondary schools
was unsatisfactory, and the chances of an
ex-elementary student reaching university
were tiny. But the NUT had done much to
raise standards, it had some brilliant leaders
and its political machine was the fear or envy
of others. It stood ready to fight for education
in both the darker and the brighter years
ahead.

Bradford pioneers school welfare

A special interest in health and fitness sprang partly from the Boer War,
when thousands of young men were rejected as being unfit for service.

A committee on Physical Deterioration was set up which reported in 1904
that it was ‘the height of cruelty to subject half-starved children to the
processes of education.’ In 1906 an Act empowered authorities to spend
money out of the rates to feed necessitous children. The first to do so
was Bradford, who took over the pioneering organisation begun by

Margaret McMillan. This outstanding woman had served as an
Independent Lal ember of the Bradford School Board. The
pictures in the next four pages, taken in 1907, shows that from the first,
the Bradford Schoo) /\icais Service was a very well organised concern.
Bradford, too was ihe first to establish a general school clinic for ;
medical treatrneni. Ip +907 a medical department was set up at the
eae hgh Ot e 1. Margaret McMillan, who declared that

Board of Education with Sir George Newman at its head. Its annual education waa failing because ‘MHeibC HORT TORE
reports did a great deal to bring about better medical facilities for are rotten’, With her sister Rachel, she

: m ‘ : : ionesred nursery education in London after
school-children. From 1907 all children were inspected on entering and ene Beane
leaving school. The Union urged that medical treatment should be made

Z tone : g . 2, These were some of the poverty-stricken

compulsory after inspection, but this was not achieved until 1918. childcan Whe rolisediHewecincaaslonmenney

were photographed at the Bradford Parish
Church School in 1900.

59

1. White Abbey Wesleyan School, which was
closed when Green Lane School was opened in
1903, was used as one of the first dining centres
in 1907. The children from Green Lane School
and others in the district attended there. In
charge and shown here was Jonathan Priestley,
the first headmaster of Green Lane School and
the father of J. B. Priestley. Dr Dessian,

ff tree e Lea,

teacher of German at Belle Vue School, is
wearing the white apron. The Union had secured
in the Feeding of Children Act that teachers
would not be compelled to supervise school
meals, but the response from Bradford teachers
to help voluntarily was overwhelming. The
education committee later offered them an
acknowledgment of sixpence per day.

2. Mr. Priestley weighs the children, helped by
Miss Marion Cuff, the organiser of domestic
subjects.

Kilogrammes
Ounces

t—+—4

Meals Stopped

Meals Resumed

>
<
raya
|
co}
=

Meals Stopped
1

t

——
£

WHITSUNTIDE
=
SUMMER HOLIDAY

top

3. The results were dramatic. This graph,
submitted to the Education Committee, showed
the increase in weight in children receiving
school meals, compared with the ‘control group’.
The gain was immediately lost during school
holidays when the children returned to a semi-
starvation diet. The Bradford Authority
accordingly began to provide meals during the
holidays. The expenditure was disallowed year
after year by the government auditor and
Bradford paid for it out of the profits of the gas
undertaking.

4, and 5. Equipment and staff in the central
kitchen. The cost of food for one child’s meal
was 1°31d.

1. This ingenious system of tubs was devised
to allow individual bathing. Most centres in
Bradford were equipped with double (shower)
baths.

2. Motor lorries were used to deliver meals to
other schools. Mr. Priestley complained
regularly in the logbook about having lorries
in the schoolyard.

3. In London, poor children waiting for free
dinners. By 1910, only 100 authorities were
providing school meals out of the rates, and
private charity still had to supplement them.

Towards a healthier
generation

4. ALondon school-girl receiving a medical
inspection in 1912,

5. Special education i ped children
was beginning, This t Deaf and
Dumb Institute in Li:

The scars of war

It is a striking fact that three major Education Acts have been passed in
wartime — 1902, 1918, and 1944. A major struggle shows up social
deficiencies and hastens existing trends. In 1914, educational reform was
in the air, but the 1918 Act contained more far-reaching proposals than
were planned in 1914.

War disrupted the educational system cruelly. Schools were
requisitioned, children were taken from school to work, and, above all,
half the male teachers joined the armed forces. Yet schools remained
open, though many resorted to a ‘double shift’ system of part-time
education for twice the number of children. The school meals service
expanded considerably to enable mothers to work.

At the outbreak of the War, the Union suspended its salaries
campaign in the national interest. But wartime conditions brought full
employment, higher wages and a rising cost of living, accentuating the
low salaries paid to teachers. In 1916, the salary campaign was
renewed and the Union secured the ‘Fisher grant’ which enabled
LEAs to pay a war bonus to serving teachers.

q TE

a i & COUNTRY
NEED YOU

ICALL TO ARMS B

&

OF SERVICE &

1 and 2. Teachers were to the fore in answering

the call to arms; indeed the Board of Education
initially tried to dissuade too many from

joining up. In 1915, the Union inaugurated a
War Aid Fund for the benefit of teachers
serving in the forces and their dependants.
Several V.C.s were awarded to teachers.

3. School children shared in the popular
excitement at the beginning of the war. War
had not yet impinged on civilian life, and there
was little realisation of the long and bloody
struggle ahead.

4. The harsh reality. Schoolgirls at the graves
of air-raid victims in Folkestone.

1. ‘School gardens’ were one contribution to
the war effort. Teachers also organised thrift
campaigns.

2. Shortages of food, fuel and clothing affected
children severely. The Schoolmaster published
weekly lessons on how to use coal economically.

3. The overcrowded schools had to expand a
little further to accommodate young Belgian
refugees.

High hopes dashed
by the money squeeze

It was 1919, and according to the NUT it
was annus mirabilis. A year earlier, the 1918
Education Act sponsored by H. A. L. Fisher,
president of the Board of Education, had
passed through Parliament; and W. P. Folland,
president of the NUT, was so moved by what
he described as the Act’s realisation of the
Child’s Charter of Freedom, which had been so
warmly espoused by the Union, that he
ended his address to Conference by quoting
Jerusalem.

Over the next 25 years, the vision of Blake
was often used by leaders of the NUT.
As usual, Jerusalem always scemed to
hover tantalisingly on the educational
horizon. Occasionally, as in 1919, it seemed
to have arrived. Yet within months it had
been redefined, the Treasury had started to
cut back spending, and it seemed yet again a
distant objective that educationists should
work towards. Such was the mood in the
early years after the passing of the Fisher Act.

So many of its causes had been enshrined
in the 1918 Act, however, that the NUT had
every reason for its early euphoria. The act
improved the administrative organisation of
education, secured for every child an un-
impeded life in elementary school until
14, established part-time day continuation
schools (which never got started except in
Rugby), made a series of proposals for
developing the senior end of education,
consolidated elementary school grants and
surveyed the total educational provision of
the country. Above all, it laid the foundations
of a national education system.

It also added to the Government’s powers
to stimulate local education authorities,
reformed the grant system, abolished the
half-time system and fees in elementary
schools, and empowered education authorities
to raise the school-leaving age to 15 (which
took another 30 years in most areas). It
permitted authorities to open nursery schools,
and it laid down that elementary school
classes should consist of a maximum of 60
pupils (though such a size should not be
tolerated), and that secondary classes should
never exceed 35. The Act also introduced
and enshrined the philosophy of equality of
opportunity, which was to become the major
issue of the next 30 years, when it said:
‘Children shall not be debarred from receiving
the benefits of any form of education by
which they are capable of profiting through
inability to pay fees’.

The crucial clause was stated in Section
One: ‘With a view to the establishment of a
national system of public education for all
persons capable of profiting thereby, it
shall be the duty of the council of every
county and county borough, so far as their
powers extend, to contribute thereto by
Providing for the progressive development

and comprehensive organisation of education
in respect of their area, and with that object
any such council may and _ shall, when
required by the Board of Education, submit
schemes showing the mode in which their
duties and powers under the Education Acts
shall be performed and exercised’.

The ideology, and the theme that was to
recur constantly until it was more prominently
stated in 1944, was put eloquently by Mr
Fisher when he spoke in the Commons in
August 1917, and discussed the ‘social
solidarity’ created by the war. After a war in
which the poor had been asked to pour out
their blood, he said, every just mind began to
realise that the boundaries of citizenship
were not determined by wealth, and that the
logic that led to an extension of the franchise
led also to an extension of education.

He went on:

‘There is a growing sense... that the industrial
workers of the country are entitled to be
considered primarily as citizens and as fit
subjects for any form of education from which
they are capable of profiting. I notice also
that a new way of thinking about education
has sprung up among the more reflecting
members of our industrial army. They do not
want education only in order that they may
become better technical workmen and earn
higher wages. They do not want it in order that
they may rise out of their own class, always a
vulgar ambition. They want it because they
know that in the treasures of the mind they
can find an aid to good citizenship, a source of
pure enjoyment, and a refuge from the necessary
hardships of a life spent in the midst of clanging
machinery in our hideous cities of toil’.

Yet by 1920, the NUT was already re-
defining its concept of Jerusalem. Whatever
the promises of the 1918 act, there were still
heights to scale and peaks to gain, Miss Jane
Wood told the annual conference in Margate
in her presidential address. At that stage;
24 years before the next Act, she outlined the
philosophy that was afterwards advocated
constantly by the NUT and which was
eventually to be the spirit of the Butler Act.
Perhaps the greatest and most pressing task,
she said, was to secure equality of opportunity
in the education system for all.

The detailed statistics in the report
buttressed the arguments that had been
advanced by the NUT. It pointed out, for
instance, that about a half of the 14 to 15
year olds and three out of five of the 15 to 16
year olds in the country were not getting any
full-time education at all, Out of 3,600,000
children of 11 to 16, more than half in 1922-23
were in elementary schools. Only 265,000
(7:2 per cent) were in grant-aided secondary
schools and 12,000 in junior technical
schools. At the age of 13 to 14, only 88 per
cent of children were attending school.

Arguing the case for raising the school
leaving age, the report said that there was a
proved social and intellectual deterioration
resulting from the premature entry of many
thousands of young persons into wage-
earning employment, as well as the waste of
part of the effort and money applied to the
early stages of children’s lives. ‘It may be
urged’, the report said, ‘that it is unreasonable
to incur the burden of prolonging education
at a period of great economic depression.
It may be equally urged that it is unreasonable
to attempt to harvest crops in spring, or to
divert into supplying the economic necessities
of the immediate present the still undeveloped
capacities of those on whose intelligence and
character the very life of the nation must
depend in the future. There is no capital
more productive than the energies of human
beings. There is no investment more re-
munerative than expenditure devoted to
developing them’.

Two years later, the Board of Education
issued The New Prospect in Education,
which showed that the arguments in the
Hadow Report had been persuasive. ‘It is
important’, the Board said, ‘to grasp the fact
that the Report has in mind ail sorts and
conditions of children, the humble and the
weak as well as the mighty and the strong,
and that to concentrate especially on the
erection of a few splendidly-equipped schools
for selected children is to miss the real lesson’.

‘The advance contemplated is not on a
narrow and selective front, but the whole
line is to move forward’.

The NUT, which also published a detailed
reaction to the report, agreed almost wholly
with the recommendations. A 71-page docu-
ment ended with §5 NUT proposals, among
them a suggestion for experiments with
multiple bias schools, the early forerunners of
the comprehensive school, and a warning
about the dangers involved in selection at
rr plus. It added that sufficient time and
attention should be devoted to arts and crafts
and music, as well as to language teaching;
that no class should exceed 40; supported the
raising of the school-leaving age and urged
the abolition of fees for secondary education;
and said that if any distinction was to be
made at 11 plus, it was the humble and the
weak who should get special attention, for
they were the least able to help themselves.
‘The teachers of the country accept with a
few reservations the changes that are now
proposed’ the Union said, ‘not because the
new system is likely to be perfect, but
because it provides a base from which a
further and outstanding advance may be
made’.

The second Hadow Report, published in
1931, shaped primary education for the next
20 years; indicated the psychological thinking

that changed the old elementary school into
the modern primary school; endorsed a break
at seven plus for entry to junior school, and
at 11 plus for entry to secondary school; and
discussed research supporting the concept of
streaming pupils by the age of ten. The
central statement of its section on the
curriculum, still of interest today in the
light of some of the allegations about ‘modern’

Several classes at work in one classroom.
Economic difficulties severely affected school
building in the inter-war period.

methods, was: ‘We are of the opinion that the
curriculum of the primary school is to be
thought of in terms of activity and experience
rather than of knowledge to be acquired and
facts to be stored’. It also demanded a
maximum size of class of 40, parental co-
operation, improved school building stan-
dards, and the training of teachers for back-
ward groups.

{Seven years later, under Sir Will Spens,
the Consultative Committee again endorsed
the ‘ages and stages’ pattern of the two
Hadow Reports, and recommended an
expansion of technical schools; the continued
expansion of secondary education in grammar,
modern and technical schools (as well as
experiments with all three on the same site);
parity of staffing between secondary schools;
the raising of the school-leaving age to 16;
and the introduction of courses based on
senior pupils’ vocational interests. As was to
happen in the 1960s, the agenda for the next
leap forward had been outlined.]

Meanwhile, although its eyes were con-
Stantly on the horizon, the Union was con-
tinually called on to defend the interests of
its members and of the nation’s schools. The
slump was imminent and two reports from
the Committee on National Expenditure -
the May and Ray reports — recommended
severe cuts in the education budget. One
showed just how necessary was the deter-
d stand taken by the NUT, as well,
8, as the progress that was being made.

‘Since the standard of education, elementary
and secondary, that is being given to the
children of poor parents’, it said, ‘is already
in very many cases superior to that which the
middle-class parent is providing for his own
child, we feel that it is time to pause’.

As the slump progressed, schools were
closed, school building was suspended, and
in October 1932, when more than 7,000

unqualified teachers were in service, 1,100
newly-qualified teachers were unemployed.
The NUT fought to protect their interests.
Yet it was also still looking ahead, and it
launched a campaign under the banner ‘Free
secondary education for all capable of
profiting by it’. Once the slump was passed,
moreover, spending on education picked up
and there was a flurry of activity from the
Board. A bill was introduced for the raising
of the school leaving age by 1939, though
parents were able to opt out. Spending of
£12m on technical education was sanctioned.
It issued circulars on school building, nursery
schools, school transport, medical services
and physical training.

After the death of King George V in 1935,
and only a few years before the outbreak of
war, which was to offer once again the
impetus for a major reform, the Board of
Education issued a survey of the progress of
education since 1910. It showed on the one
hand that there had certainly been progress.
Yet on the other it showed that the NUT
was justified in saying clamourously that
still more was needed. Among the points
that it made were:—

The cooperative partnership between central
and local government, adumbrated in the
1918 act, had become an established fact,
and there was less detailed control from
Whitehall.

One and three-quarter million new school
places had been built.

There were 38,000 classes of more than 50
in 1920, including 7,000 with more than 60.
Now there were only 4,262, of which only
44 were of more than 60.

A comprehensive plan for the advanced
education of the mass of the nation’s children
had been carried already halfway to com-
pletion. In 1935, nearly 800,000 pupils (41
per cent) older than 11 were in senior depart-
ments compared with 163,000 (8-5 per cent)
in 1927.

The average salary of a man teacher had
increased from £199 to £404, and of a woman
from £133 to £311 in the same period; and
the percentage of graduates from 54 to 78
per cent.

The number of school medical officers
had increased from 995 to 1,412, of school
dentists from 27 to 852, of school nurses
from 436 to 3,429 and of medical inspections
from one to three million.

Six causes of progress were identified by
the Board :—

The new fact of public control, which it
said was the most fundamental.

Proper financial provision for school building
and maintenance.

Effective internal organisation following the
regulation of age and conditions of entry.
The development of a reasonable system of
examinations, which afforded a test of
ordinary school work to which the whole of
appropriate forms were submitted and not
just selected pupils.

The development of sixth form work and
its effect on the whole school.

Above all and the most essential, the growth
of a body of teachers, better educated, more
generally interested in their work, and-
though much remained to be done in this
respect — with fuller opportunities for learning
the technique of their profession.

At the outbreak of war, the Union was
thrown into a maelstrom of activity. Union
headquarters were removed to Toddington
Manor in Gloucestershire and Union staff
performed heroic labours on behalf of the
schools, children and teachers who were
evacuated to the country. Yet in spite of its
pre-occupation with the war, the NUT had
already started its campaign for the new
Education Act when the first Conference of
the war was held in 1942. Over the next three
years, and under the vigorous leadership of
Sir Fred Mander, genera! secretary, and Mr
Ronald Gould, president of the Union in
1943 and eventual successor to Mander, the
Union was seen at its most effective and,
perhaps, at the most significant period of its
whole history: an insistent, powerful and
influential force for educational progress. Its
stamp was recognisably set on the resultant
act, which was, in fact, largely the work of
Sir Fred Mander, Sir Percival Sharpe;
secretary of the Association of Education
Committees, and Sir Maurice Holmes,
Permanent Secretary to the Board of Educa-
tion. The contribution of the Union was
recognised by Mr Churchill when he said
that because of the activities of the NUT:
‘The people have been rendered conscious
that they are coming into their inheritance’.

The NUT campaign had been initiated
at a meeting at Central Hall, Westminster,
in 1941, the year when the Board’s draft
proposals for the Act were circulated in 4
draft form. Soon, the Union joined forces
with the Workers’ Educational Association
and the TUC in the Council for Educational

Advance, and in 1942, it published the ‘sage
green book’, its 45-page document, Educa-
tional Reconstruction. The document had
been approved by the Conference and was the
summation of the policies that the Union had
advocated since the 1920s.

‘The Executive of the NUT? ‘are profoundly
convinced that equal educational opportunity
for all must be an essential characteristic of
any state system of education for this country if
11 is t0 continue its democratic form of govern-
ment’, They wish, however, to state clearly
what they understand by equality of opportunity.
It is the application of the principle ‘that the
accidents of parental circumstances or of the
place of residence shall not preclude any child
from receiving the education from which he is
best capable of profiting’.

No-one would seriously suggest that there
is equality of opportunity in this country
today. The need for change is therefore
patent... There is one change which must
be effected before the system can afford any
degree of equality between children in schools
even in the same town or district. Consequent
upon the method of development of the
State system of education, there has grown
up within it a caste system, which should
find no place in any national scheme of
education.

‘This is exemplified in a number of ways.
The type of school determines the standards
of accommodation, the character of the
amenities provided, the normal length of
school life, the salaries of teachers engaged
and even the fees which have to be paid. By
common consent, the statutory and adminis-
trative distinction between elementary and
higher education, which corresponds to no
educational distinction, is a deplorable weak-
ness of the present system. But it is not the
only one. The fact that a child’s educational
Prospects are largely determined by the
geographical location of his home is another,
and this calls loudly for remedy’.

The two aims, the NUT said, should be the
creation of the conditions needed to afford

The last meeting of the executive of the NUT
attended by Sir James Yoxall before his
retirement in 1922.

equality of opportunity and a greater unifica-
tion of the educational system. Its detailed
recommendations included the establishment
of nursery education from two, a school life
until 16, the abolition of fees for secondary
education, a single code of regulations for all
secondary schools, provision for further
education until 18, annual medical inspections,
a duty on education authorities to provide
free school meals, a trained and graduate
teaching profession, a single authority for all
primary and secondary education, and a
unified, local administration system for the
education service. Almost all of the recom-
mendations were included in the Act.

A year later, the Board, under the joint

leadership of R.A. Butler and Chuter Ede,
published its White Paper on Educational
Reconstruction. The Government’s purpose,
it said, was to secure for children a happier
childhood and a better start in life; to secure a
fuller measure of education and opportunity
for young people, and to provide means for
all to develop the various talents with which
they were endowed, and so enriching the
inheritance of the country whose citizens they
were.
‘The new educational opportunities must not,
therefore, be of a single pattern, It is just as
important to achieve diversity as it is to ensure
equality of educational opportunity. But such
diversity must not impair the social unity
within the education system which will open
the way to a more closely knit society and give
us strength to face the tasks ahead. In the
youth of the nation we have our greatest national
asset. Even on a basis of mere expediency, we
cannot afford not to develop this asset to the
greatest advantage’.

It went on to set out the following agenda
for the Act:—

A sufficient supply of nursery schools.

The raising of the school-leaving age to 15,
and then to 16 as soon as circumstances
allowed.

Primary education until 11.

Secondary education, of diversified types
but of equal standing, for all children.

At primary level, the large classes and bad
conditions which were a reproach to the
system would be systematically eliminated.

At secondary level, the standard of accom-
modation and amenities would be raised in
all schools to the level of the best examples.
School meals and milk would be made
obligatory.

There would be medical inspection and
treatment without charge.

Provision for part-time education until 18.

The NUT nevertheless continued its
campaign. The annual conference approved
the step in the White Paper towards equality
of opportunity in the system, but regretted
that a firm date for the raising of the school
leaving age to 6 had been omitted, that all
secondary education was not made free of
fees, and that statutory provision had not
been made for reducing the size of classes.

Offering the NUT in 1943 an early indica-
tion of his oratorical ability, Ronald Gould,
the president, described what was still wrong
with the education system.

‘It provides unequal opportunities in schools
of unequal social standing’, he declared, ‘giving
courses of unequal length under unequal con-
ditions. Such a state of affairs is socially evil
and morally reprehensible. If equality of
opportunity is anything more than a catchword,
it must be made to mean exactly what it says.
We must provide equal opportunities, in schools
of equal soctal standing, giving courses of equal
duration under equivalent conditions. This
means the ending of shabby treatment for the
many and the sharing of privileges by all’.

A special national assembly was called in
London in November to start an intensive,
sustained and nationwide campagn for the
introduction of the Bill, at which both Gould
and Mander delivered inspiring addresses
to the troops. Mander explained that the
Union had moved now into a political
situation and ended, in a good example of
the sort of oratory that spiced the conferences
of the inter-war years: ‘I would that I had the
silver tongue of a McNamara and could fire
you as he did in days of old’. Then I would
say to you: ‘Be strong for the child, gird up
your loins, quit you like men’. Meetings
were held throughout the country, both by
the NUT and the CEA, and a Watching
Committee was established to supervise the
passage of the bill through parliament.

& SFP

a

b1ZPRE
” -OSR

69

The Act which eventually received the
Royal Assent embodied the proposals of the
1943 White Paper, as well as the reforms that
had been advocated by the NUT. It was
greeted by G.C.T. Giles, president of the
Union in 1944, as a great step forward towards
a democratic system of education, embodying
a new and worthier conception of the value
and purpose of education.

Aiming for the summit of Snowdon are
delegates at the 1939 conference held at
Llandudno.

The Act replaced and reformed almost all
law relating to education since 1870 and
offered Free Secondary Education for Ali as
its main promise. Its main provisions were :—

A new authority over education was
assigned to the state and the newly-titled
Minister of Education was empowered to
secure the effective execution by local
authorities, under his control and direction,
of the national policy for education.

The old arrangement of elementary and
higher education was replaced by ‘a con-
tinuous process conducted in three stages’
of primary, secondary and further education.

The county and county borough councils
were made responsible for all stages and local
education authorities were given the duty
to secure adequate provision of primary
and secondary education, including nursery
and special schools, and to prepare develop-
ment plans. Tuition fees in state schools
were forbidden.

The dual system, the side-by-side existence
of schools provided by education authorities
and the Churches, was modified, but the
voluntary bodies were offered generous
financial help.

The day in all state schools was to begin
with a corporate act of worship and religious
i ction in state schools was to be given

Bg to the syllabus agreed by the
denominations.

The former legal duty of parents to cause
their children to get efficient elementary
instruction in the three Rs was replaced by a
duty to ensure that their children got efficient
full-time education suited to their age,
aptitudes and abilities.

Statutory backing was given to the Burnham
Committee and the Minister was empowered
to make its scales mandatory on education
authorities. It also enacted equal pay for
women.

Education authorities were given welfare
functions, including medical inspection, free
medical and dental treatment, milk, meals
and other refreshment, and the provision of
free clothing and scholarships for higher
education.

Authorities were given the duty of pro-
viding compulsory part-time education
equivalent to one day a week in County
Colleges for those under 18 who were not in
full-time education.

The act was a triumphant vindication of
the NUT’s efforts since 1918 and its passing
amounted, perhaps, to its finest hour.

The religious controversy

Although it dominated the debate immediately
before the 1944 Act, the controversy over
religious education and instruction needs a
book in itself. Yet the role of the NUT, and
especially of Sir Fred Mander, was crucial in
the compromise that was eventually adopted
by Mr Butler.

Mander had succeeded to the General
Secretaryship of the Union in 1929 after he
had impressed the annual conference with a
passionate declaration that there should be no
yielding to the Churches by teachers during a
religious controversy which was going on at
the time. Yer later he became much more
concerned about educational development
than the religious issue, and at the time when
the new Act was under preparation he was so
concerned to achieve the educational advance
that he considered essential, and in particular,
Secondary Education for All, that he was
content to accept almost any compromise
solution that would enable the Act to get on
to the Statute Book with the educational
reforms that the NUT wanted.

The controversy erupted in 1941 when the
Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Wales
issued a public statement emphasising their
concern that schools should instruct pupils
in a Christian view of life. At this stage,
Mander wrote a crucial series of five articles
in The Schoolmaster setting out the grounds
for a solution of the argument.

Teachers, he declared, saw no reason what-
soever why the Archbishops should continue
to call the tune in schools maintained though
not provided by the local authorities and to
call the tune, with the help of Free Church-
men, in schools both maintained and provided
out of public money. They felt even more
strongly when certain of the suggestions might
threaten their professional interests on such
vital points as appointment, dismissal, tenure,
promotion, and even freedom of conscience,
So long as it was teachers and not the Churches
who were called on to give the instruction, it
was teachers and not the churches who were
pivotal to the whole position. “The idea of
religious instruction given in ‘state schools

under duress in accordance with a scheff*
imposed from outside in opposition to th
reasonable rights and wishes of teachers 3
unthinkable’, he wrote. ‘It would mark th:
beginning of the end to religious instruction i
the schools’.

The major points of the solution he pro-
posed were :—

A national syllabus recommended by tht
Board for adoption as a basic of the scheme of
instruction in schools.

A freeing of the timetable so that teachers who
did not want to teach r.i. were freed from it
Abolition of the right of entry by the Churches
and inspection by HMIs.

Voluntary schools should be transferred
ideally to local authorities but with due safe-
guards for trust deed teaching.

Safeguards on any test of the _ religious
credentials of teachers.

A disclaimer by the Churches of any desire
to inspect.

Such in the end was largely the basis of the
NUT’s submission to the Government, and,
as the clauses in the Act show, several were
accepted, Yet the triumph belonged to Mr
Butler. He proposed a solution which nobody
thought satisfactory, but which gave all
parties something they wanted, and which
none of them could reject. Ever since the
controversy has died down.

The Act that partl failed 1. Mr. A. L. Fisher arriving for the opening of
y Parliament in 1919. An eminent historian and
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield,

he was appointed President of the Board of
Education by Lloyd George in 1917. He quickly
utilised the prevailing climate of social reform
to introduce his far-reaching measures. ‘The
war was my opportunity’, he later said.

The 1918 Act and its partner, the Teachers’ Superannuation Act,

were hailed by the Union as a crowning of its efforts. But the
economic blizzard that hit the nation three years later made it a partial
failure. The Act established a universal leaving-age of 14, abolished the
half-time system, strengthened local authorities, and extended the meals
and medical services. It also planned a school-leaving age of 15, day
continuation classes for all up to 18, and the provision of nursery
schools; these clauses proved inoperable.

eee

2. The building was specially built for Rugby's A major factor in its success was the number of
continuation school. The idea of continuation new electrical industries in Rugby who

classes had been borrowed from Germany. appreciated well-educated labour. Attera
Children who left school at 14 were to attend useful life it finally closed in 1969.

classes for a minimum of 320 hours every year —

day release, in effect. It was to be compulsory

up to 16 at first and up to 18 after seven years. 3. The Union continued to press for nursery

In the event, not even the first part got off the schools for the under-fives to be established, as
ground. Only the school in Rugby survived. allowed by the Act, but very few were.

3

The beginning of Burnham

Soon after the passage of the Education Act and Superannuation Act,
Fisher tackled the problem of teachers’ salaries, which had been so
dramatically highlighted during the war. He dismissed the first idea of
civil service status as endangering educational freedom and instead
arrived at the solution of the Burnham Committees. The Elementary
Schools Committee recommended a scale that meant that, because of the
steep rise in the cost of living, the teachers were actually slightly worse
off in real terms than they had been in 1914. But at least the worst
anomalies were removed as the LEAs were forced by the NUT to
accept the scale. The NUT wisely refused a scale based on the cost of
living and thus gained as prices fell from 1921 onwards.

2. The Elementary Schools Committee was
made up of representatives of the NUT and the
LEA associations. This was the standard scale 1. Viscount Burnham, who chaired the joint
they suggested in 1920. Many graduates, committees and gave his name to them.
including those who had taken four-year courses

in day training colleges, taught in public

elementary schools.

2:
SCALE FOR CERTIFICATED TEACHERS.
:

3. (a) Certificated Assistant Teachers, Two Years College Trained :—

MEN. WoMEN.

SCALE.
Annual
Increment.

Annual

Maximum.) Minimum.
Increment.

Minimum. Maximum,

Standard ScaleI. - - - on es oe a ay ee

=) (6) There shall be added to the Minimum—

~ (i) one increment for Certificated Teachers who either have completed
=P a three years’ continuous period of training or are graduates of a British
University ;

(ii) two increments for Certificated Teachers who are graduates of British
Universities, and have also completed a four years’ continuous period of
training.

(c) For other Certificated Assistant Teachers, except as provided in Section 14
of the Standard Scales Report, the Minimum shall be less than that stated in (a)
above by the amount of one increment in each case, the maximum remaining
unaltered.
(2) Married Teachers— . :

In cases in which a husband and wife, both being Certificated Teachers,
have been appointed or are appointed to posts in the same school or
department, and where the requirements of the Board of Education as to
staffing can be met by the appointment of an Assistant Teacher who is not
ficated, the salary of the husband (if he be the Assistant Teacher) or
wife (if she be the Assistant Teacher) shall be that attaching to the

S of the Assistant Teacher required.

The Geddes axe falls

‘The educational year which dawned full of hope is closing amidst
doubt, uncertainty and gloom.’ The 1921 presidential address by
G. H. Powell was the first of many gloomy comments by Union
Leaders. In the economic depression of the inter-war years, the NUT
battled to protect education and their own position against
government cuts. Their comparative success in preserving salaries in a
period of falling prices and their freedom from mass unemployment
ae that the profession achieved a higher status by the end of the
tes.

3. Teachers had to accept several ‘voluntary’
cuts in their salary, each one of which was
stoutly opposed by the Union. This wry
comment was drawn by a Kent teacher in 1926.
Lord Eustace Percy was President of the Board
of Education and Winston Churchill was
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative
government of 1924 to 4929. Percy is saying to
Winnie ‘She looks jolly nice with that cut’.

4. Unemployed dockers - a picture that mirrors
the greyness of the depressed areas. Newly
qualified teachers, particularly in Wales, found
greai difficulty in finding their first post. The
Union paid them until they had succeeded.

“aA CLOSE CUT”

——————————

1. In 1931 a 10 per cent cut was imposed — it
would have been 15 per cent if the Union had not
intervened. In 1933 the NUT and the Educational
Institute of Scotland organised a mammoth
petition to demand a restitution of the lost
salary. More than 210,000 signatures were
received and they were delivered to Number 10
Downing Street (occupied by Ramsay
MacDonald). The cut was not restored until
1935.

2. The members of the joint delegation of the
NUT and the EIS which presented the petition. In
the back row (left to right) are Miss A. B. Muir,
Mr H. Humphreys, Mr Hugh B. Guthrie, and

Miss M. Gardner, all of the NUT. in the front

are Mr Thomas Henderson, General Secretary of
the EIS, Mr Charles W. Thomson, President of
the EIS, Mr H. N. Penlington, President of the
NUT and Mr F. Mander (later Sir Frederick
Mander), General Secretary of the NUT.

3. One of the main casualties of the government
squeeze was the raising of the school leaving
age to 15. The NUT constantly urged that it
should be implemented, and one argument they
used was that it would help to solve the serious
problem of unemployed youngsters. In 1936,

a definite commitment was made which would
have come into effect on September 1, 1939, but
on that day Germany invaded Poland, and it
was again postponed. This junior instruction
centre in Sunderland was one of many
established by local authorities to give some
sort of craft instruction to school-leavers until
they found a job,

Secondary education for all —
but how ?

All children now stayed on at school until 14, but for most their

entire school life was spent in one elementary school. Then, too, the
secondary grammar schools could no longer accommodate all pupils
qualified to enter. The Hadow Report in 1926 suggested three main
solutions, besides reiterating the need for a school-leaving age of 15.

It advocated the reorganisation of all-age elementary schools into
separate junior and senior schools; it gave official sanction, now backed
by psychological evidence, to the transfer age of 11 which had evolved
after 1902; and it proposed that another type of post-primary education
should be developed alongside the grammar schools, based on the existing
technical and central! schools.

By the time the Spens Committee reported in 1939, a system of
grammar, modern and technical schools had emerged, and with it came a
philosophy of aptitudes which held that children could be assigned to
different schools at 11 according to their bent for academic study,
applied science or art, or practical work. Though welcoming the
extension of post-primary education to all pupils, the NUT increasingly
questioned the wisdom of segregation into different types of schools,
which would never, despite official protestations, be regarded as equal.
From Hadow onwards they urged that experiments in multi-bias schools,
the fore-runners of comprehensives, should be encouraged. The Spens
Report studied this proposition very seriously but reluctantly turned it
down on considerations of excessive size and difficulty in maintaining
academic standards — arguments that were later to become very familiar
in the comprehensive debate.

4. A chemical laboratory in a grammar school.
The main criticism of grammar school

education in this period was of the excessive
influence of the School Certificate Examination,
and the Norwood Committee in 1943 suggested a
new examination structure. The NUT sought to
have fees entirely abolished but, once again, the
nation's economic plight made this impossible.

5. Nature study in a central school. Central
schools, as we have seen, had grown up
before 1914 in a rather devious way to meet
the demand for secondary education and

had only received official recognition in the
1918 Act. Their bias was practical but not purely
vocational, and they fitted well into the
philosophy for ‘modern’ schools laid down by
Hadow. Their pupils were selected at 11 at

a lower standard than for grammar schools.
A curious anomaly was that they were still
governed by the Elementary Code and not the
Secondary Code. The NUT tried hard to have
one code adopted for all schools but without
success until 1944.

i

1. A woodwork class ical
school. Again, junior t ols had
been established before t WW nly in
industrial centres in the N They took
pupils at 13 for acurriculum ba nthe
techniques of local industries, but, as distinct

from ‘trade schools’, they did not set out to
train for specific jobs. The standard reached
was uSually higher than in central schools.
The Spens Report was very enthusiastic about
their work, and recommended that they should
take pupils at 11.

2. Boys learning the craft of bookbinding ina
senior school. Senior schools had developed
before 1914, as non-selective central schools.
They catered for pupils who had failed to gaina
place in the other three types of schools, and
their function was to a large extent remedial.
Craftwork played a very important part in the
curriculum. Teachers had to take this in their
stride without any specialised training, and the
standard reached was a tribute to their
enthusiasm.

From elementary to junior

Elementary schools were now known as junior
schools. The change from all-age schools gave
a greater coherence and freedom to teaching,
and the modern primary school began to
emerge. But the eleven plus selection became
increasingly important and in some ways it
meant an unwelcome return to external
examinations which had been one of the
bugbears of ‘payment by results’. Streaming
was accepted by the 1931 Hadow Report on
primary education as a necessary feature of the
junior school.

3. Hadow reorga lifficult to achieve
in rural areas b arge areas
involved. In many asses or
‘higher tops' had te W nthe same
building as the ju But where
centralised schc school buses
made their appeara The Rutland
Committee adopted a different solution. They
gave grants to parents to buy bicycles for their
children.

4. Cyril Burt, professor of psychology at
University College, London, from 1931 to 1950,
supported the importance of 'the general factor
of intelligence’ as against ‘aptitudes’. Tests
devised by Burt had been used as early as 1919
in Bradford as part of the ‘eleven plus’, with the
aim of overcoming enviranmental factors.
Many authorities adopted standardised tests in
English, Arithmetic and Intelligence, but
selection procedures were still anything but
uniform.

5. A vivid portrait of an all-age school. In 1922,
all the pupils at the Liantwit Fardre Council
Schaol in Glamorgan were photographed in
the playground. The occasion was the retiral of
their headmaster Mr William Chubb, the
dignified gentleman in the bowler hat.

More child-centred teaching

Educational theory was in the air. The apostles of ‘child-centred
education’ — Dewey, Froebel and Montessori — were having an increasing
impact on teaching.

‘Activity’ learning was most apparent in the infant departments
particularly in the Montessori classes set up in many schools, but in
every type of school, teaching methods were more fluid, and practical
work more important. Extra-curricular activities such as school
orchestras and clubs flourished. The 1918 Act had allowed LEAs to
spend money on school camps, swimming baths, and playing fields, and
many took advantage of this dispensation.

1. A Montessori class in an infant school. The
1931 Report on primary education recognized
seven plus as the best age of transfer from
infant school or department to junior school.

2. A shop to practise arithmetic in an infant
school.

3. A needlework class. Teachers often
had to improvise with imperfect equipment and
accommodation to widen the curriculum.

4. Boys at a senior school working out the
height of their school as a practical application
of classroom mathematics.

5. ‘Housewifery centres’ were included in many
new schools.

6 and 7. The gramophone and the wireless
made their contribution to teaching methods.

8. Learning how the engine of a motor-car
works.

A place in the sun

In a reaction to the overcrowded slums of the old towns, the nation
developed a passion for fresh air. The new schools to match the new
housing estates were much more open. Classes were frequently held
outside, and children were sent, for short and long periods, to open-air
schools.

1. Schools typically, were built round an open
quadrangle, where earlier it would have been
the school hall. School-building was of course
badly hit by the recurring squeezes anda
Black List of below-standard schools originally
drawn up by the Board of Education in 1908
and revised in 1927 was only slowly reduced.
Classrooms often had one side that could

be opened out completely.

2. An open-air school in St James's Park in
1927. At the height of the enthusiasm for open-
air learning, there were 170 classes being
regularly held in London parks all the year
round, using bandstands as their only refuge
in wet weather. Most were for normal children,
but one well-known one, in Regent's Park, was
started in 1911 for tubercular children. They
were given clogs to keep their feet dry, rugs to
cover them, and in the depths of winter, slow
combustion foot-warmers.

4
!

3. An open-air school for tubercular children.
Before the development of modern drugs,
fresh air, sunshine, and rest were the only
palliatives for the disease. In 1930, the LCC
alone had seven open-air day schools. With
the open wooden buildings substantially
rebuilt, they now serve as schools for delicate
children.

4. After the 1918 Act, the provision of school
meals increased, but still only a very small
percentage of children benefited. The
emphasis was still far more on need than

on meals as part of a general education.

This picture shows how many rural schools,
where the demand was greater because

of the long distances now to be travelled, had
to cope without a dining-room. These children
paid 1s 3d per week for their meals, which were
cooked in the cookery room and served by the
children.

5. Some authorities began to issue free milk,
mainly to the youngest classes.

j
|
4
P|
4
J

1. Medical treatment was now compulsory
following inspection. Ultra-violet ray treatment
was in fashion.

2. Boys learning to cook in a special school for
backward children. Special education was still
largely concerned with the needs of physically
handicapped children but there was growing
interest in and provision for the different types
of educationally backward and mentally
handicapped children. Educationists were
beginning to realise just how much environ-
mental factors could cripple a child's
intelligence.

3 and 4. A movable school for gipsy children
and a floating school for children of canal
workers. Then, it was accepted that schools
and teachers should follow the nomads.
Nowadays the tendency is to try to persuade
them to settle in one place and attend a
permanent school.

Teacher training
comes under fire

Insistent questioning of the system of teacher-training led to little real
change. The pupil-teacher system finally vanished. LEAs extended their
bursary system for intending teachers to university places. But the split
between elementary and secondary teacher-training and the gulf between
training colleges and universities persisted. A move to bring them
together was started by a Departmental Committee Report to the Board
of Education in 1925. Its modest proposal was that the Board should
cease to examine training college students. The responsibility was

given to Joint Boards representing the colleges and the universities in
each area. In only a few cases did this mean any extensive co-operation
between university and colleges.

The 1925 Report was a disappointment to the NUT. Two Union
members of the committee, Miss E. R. Conway and F. J. Sainsbury,
signed a Memorandum of Dissent which recommended that all training
courses should be post-academic, preferably post-graduate and strictly
professional in content. The McNair Report in 1943 went some way
towards the ideal of a unified graduate profession, but it is an ideal still
to be realised.

6. Refresher courses for serving teachers

began to be accepted as a very useful feature of
the educational scene. These teachers,
gathered in the Roman Amphitheatre at
Caerleon in 1935, were attending the first course
ever to be held in Monmouthshire.

5. Social life in the students’ hostel at
Langham Tower training college, in Sunderland.
Sunderland Education Committee established
the college in 1908, for men and women. In 1922,
when it moved to Langham Tower, it was
restricted to women students; in 1970, as the
Sunderland College of Education, it again
includes men amongst its 700 students.

World War Il

The effects of the Second World War followed the same pattern as the
First, but to a heightened degree. Plans for reform at the beginning of
the war were abandoned, severe disruption of the schools threw their

. short-comings into sharp relief, and out of the holocaust came the

| 1944 Act.

In September 1939, Union headquarters were transferred to
Toddington Manor, in Gloucestershire. The following period was one of
the most strenuous in the Union’s history. The NUT co-operated with the
Board and the LEAs to keep education going and the war set the seal on
the partnership between the teachers and the two branches of the
administration.

The Union was determined not to make the same mistake as in the
First War, and pressed for a war bonus as soon as the cost of living
began to rise sharply. Several were granted, but the Union had to resort
to the National Arbitration Tribunal to make all authorities pay out.

The NUT also made strenuous efforts to protect the interests of
teachers serving in the armed forces.

1 and 2. Evacuation was an enormous upheaval

for children and schools. tn an apparently
; simple plan, the country was divided into
ly evacuated areas, neutral areas and receiving
areas. {nthe first all schools were closed, in
the second schools remained normal, in the
third schools were expanded to take the extra
pupils. The actual process of evacuating nearly
a million and a half people went smoothly, but
the aftermath was chaotic. The influx of extra
pupils showed just how inadequate country
schools were; many were still unreorganized
all-age schools. Evacuation took the lid off the
appalling social conditions in which many slum
children were being brought up. The role of
the teachers in this fraught situation was vital.
Since very few parents stayed with the
evacuated children, teachers were the only
source of continuity and discipline. H. C. Dent
in his account of evacuation in Education in
Transition describes their efforts as
‘superhuman’.

’
oe
ew
3. A clergyman running an Informal school in
St Mary’s Church, Quarry Hill, Leeds, for
children left behind. Evacuation was never
made compulsory and as many as a quarter of
the children stayed behind or returned. They
found schools taken over for other purposes
and teachers gone with the evacuees. Where
no provision was made for them, there were
reports of children running riot — an interesting
commentary on the importance of schools in
maintaining social order in the towns.

4. Hitler's bombers, naturally enough, did not
respect the government's neat division into

safe and unsafe areas. The provision of shelters
and gasmasks was a further strain on financial
and administrative resources.

5. Offers were received from familles in the” a
Dominions and the USA to take in British.
children for the duration of the war. These:

idea came to a sad end a'month la
City of Benares carrying evacuated ct
torpedoed. Only six children survi

6. A devastated scheolroom
direct bomb hit. Thirty: ;
teachers were killed,

The Union shows
fighting spirit

A Union stands or falls for the majority of
its members by its ability to improve their
salaries and conditions of work and to
safeguard and promote their interests and
welfare. On this basis (although there are
often periods when some of the younger or
more militant members think that the
leadership is reluctant to consider industrial
action in support of their demands for
improved salaries), the NUT has rarely
failed its members. Over the past 50 years,
it has fought vigorously to uphold its mem-
bers’ interests, and the Union's mettle was
demonstrated convincingly to the Govern-
ment, education authorities and parents on
at least four major occasions.

The early 1920’s

Shortly after the Burnham Committee had
been established, the management panel
approached teachers in 1922 and asked if they
would agree to a ‘voluntary’ reduction of
5 per cent in their salaries during 1923-24.
A special conference of the Union decided
reluctantly to accept the cut rather than see
the imposition of a more drastic compulsory
reduction.

Yet, although it commended the ‘public
spirited’ action of the teachers, the Burnham
Committee nevertheless decided that it
would make no intervention if authorities
refused to pay the agreed scales. Any disputes,
it decided, should be settled locally. Sup-
ported by this refusal, several authorities
tried to lower salaries, and in 1923 the NUT
Executive, acting in defence of the newly-
established national salary scales, decided
that no cut should be accepted which brought
any teacher below his correct position on the
scale. Unless it acted quickly, the Union
thought, other authorities would be tempted
to follow suit and Burnham would be eroded.
Action was taken and a challenge made to
authorities in several areas, notably in
Lowestoft, Southampton, Gateshead and
South Wales. Schools were closed for 14
weeks in Southampton, for 10 weeks in
Gateshead and for 11 months in Lowestoft,
where 167 teachers on strike were sustained
by the NUT at a cost of about £44,000.

The Lowestoft affair is a good example of
the NUT in action during the 1920’s. Against
the 5 per cent cut that the teachers had
accepted, albeit reluctantly, Lowestoft pro-
posed a ro per cent cut, which the NUT saw
as a repudiation of the Burnham Committee
scales, a national agreement, and the principle
of collective bargaining. The education
committee started dismissing its teachers.
Acting together, all 167 members of the
Union accepted notices terminating their
employment. The chairman of the education

Committee proclaimed his ambition to ‘smash’
the NUT, as well as the Burnham Com-

mittee. Staff were imported to fill the schools.
When the parents of 1600 pupils supported
the NUT and refused to send them to
school, the authority again got tough. Some
of the parents were prosecuted and the
authority threatened to withold scholarships
from scholarship-holders who were not at
school. Meanwhile, the striking teachers
opened classes in welfare centres for the
children not at school.

The NUT persisted until, eventually, the
Board of Education was forced to intervene.
It told Lowestoft that its grant was in
jeopardy. The warning was followed up
by an inspection both of the schools manned
by imported labour and the welfare centres.
The inspection proved so unfavourable to
the schools that the Board withdrew its grant
to the Authority. The effect was immediate.
Lowestoft established a negotiating com-
mittee which met Sir James Yoxall, General
Secretary of the NUT, and Fred Mander, his
eventual successor; and an agreement, which
was highly favourable to the teachers, was
reached. Action by the NUT had upheld the
newly-established principle of national salary
awards.

The Durham dispute, 1950-52

The Durham dispute started in 1950 when the
county council announced its intention to
dismiss all employees who were not members
of a trade union. Its attempt to implement a
closed shop immediately aroused the NUT.
Nine out of ten teachers in Durham were
members of the NUT but it did not want the
authority’s help in recruiting still more.
The view of the Union was that, although
every teacher should belong to a trade union
or professional organisation, membership
should be a voluntary act by a free individual,
exercising his choice without any pressure
from his employer. So the Union’s 5,000
members in Durham were advised to refuse
to disclose whether they were members of a
trade union or professional organisation, and
the authority was powerless. Although it
had lost the first round, Durham did not
retire. It started interrogating applicants for
teaching posts about their membership of a
union. Again the Union acted firmly. The
resignations of NUT members in two divisions
of Durham were being collected when the
Minister issued an order from London that
the offending question should not be asked:
a second victory for the NUT.

The dispute dragged on for two years. An
alliance was formed with doctors, dentists,
nurses and engineers in a Joint Committee
of the Professions but their case was still
subjected by County Hall, according to The
Schoolmaster, to ‘insult, provocation and
misrepresentation’. Stronger action became
necessary when the authority insisted that

applications for sick pay should be submitted
through a professional organisation. All 5,000
teachers in Durham would resign their posts,
the NUT then declared, unless the authority
retreated, It collected all their resignations
which, if posted, would have meant a collapse
of the education service in Durham. At the
same time, the Union complained to George
Tomlinson, Minister of Education, that
Durham was exercising its powers un-
reasonably. Shortly afterwards, Mr Tomlinson
wrote to Durham, formaliy instructing the
authority that teachers should not be co-
erced into union membership. The dispute
ended in June 1952 when an arbitration
tribunal reported in favour of the NUT. The
decision convincingly demonstrated that the
numerical strength of the NUT meant power.
Speaking of the Durham dispute tothe NUT
Conference, Sir Ronald Gould, General
Secretary, drew the moral: ‘The story of their
fight’ he said, ‘has reverberated round the
world and won the admiration of millions.
Theirs’ was indeed a famous victory, which
established not only professional liberty for
themselves, but proved a salutary warning to
petty tyrants elsewhere who, had it not been
for Durham, might have considered tam-
pering with the liberty of the teacher’.

The fight over pensions, 1954
A spontaneous surge of anger swept through
the NUT when Miss Florence Horsbrugh,
Minister of Education, asked teachers to
accept an increase in their contributions to
the Pension Fund from five to six per cent
to cover a deficit in the Superannuation Fund.
The demand was immediately described by
the NUT as equivalent to a cut of one per
cent in salaries. Other grounds for the
militant-and partly successful — agitation
that followed were:
1. Superannuation for teachers was originally
intended to be on a non-contributory basis.
It became contributory only after the 1925
Superannuation Act which forced teachers
to contribute to a pension scheme. They had
never agreed with the Contribution and had
always considered it as a breach of faith by
the Government.
2. Several other Superannuation Funds were
in deficit, but had not been singled out,
like the teachers, by the Government
Actuary.
3. The NUT had campaigned for a pension
scheme including provisions for widows and
orphans, and was prepared to pay more for
the extra benefits — but local authorities had
consistently refused to consider such 4
scheme, or to carry part of its cost. The NUT
was not prepared to negotiate with the
Government simply on the basis of paying
more, but getting nothing in return.

The Union strenuously opposed the Bill

introduced by Miss Horsbrugh. Its campaign
was supported by the Opposition, the Liberals
and even a few Conservative MPs. As a result
of the opposition, the Cabinet decided that
the Bill could not be taken through Parliament
before July I, 1954, when it was due to be
introduced. Meanwhile, Miss Horsbrugh was
replaced by Sir David Eccles, but the Govern-
ment still said that the Bill would go through
before March 1955, but the opposition
produced its effect. It took Sir David until
October 1955 to finish his discussions with
teachers and education authorities. He then
announced that the Government would meet
the existing deficit (a concession), but added
that the contribution was still to be raised to
six per cent, and that he was not prepared to
endorse a scheme for widows and orphans
against the opposition of the education
authorities.

The new bill was fought in the country
and in parliament, although without the
support of teachers in the unions representing
the grammar schools. Nearly all the Union's
called special protest
meetings, at which attendances often jumped
to up to 80 per cent « local membership.
Ata pound a head, the Flertfordshire associa-
tion collected £3, within a month to
establish a fighting fund. Schools had played
a big part in building up the National
Savings Movement and about 27,250 schools

681 local associations

had savings groups involving more than two
million children, so at this stage the Union
decided on a new tactic. It took the un-
precedented step of asking all members to stop
collecting school savings, although it refused
to join the National Association of School-
masters in stopping the collection of dinner
money.

Again, the opposition of the NUT led toa
concession, and in February, 1956, the
Government postponed the date of the
proposed increase to October 1. It hoped that
by then the Burnham Committee would have
reached a new salary settlement, which would
cancel out the effect of the increased pension
contribution. After a two year struggle, the
dispute ended when teachers won a salary
award raising the basic scale for men from
£475 to £900. The award was also coupled
with the momentous breakthrough that the
scale for women was to rise by yearly incre-
ments to full equality with the scale for men by
1961. After 30 years, equal pay for women
had been established, but the response from
the National Association of Schoolmasters
was to appeal to local authorities to refuse it.
Equal pay, the Association said, would
increase the rates. Only 200 out of 2,000
delegates attending a special conference
voted against acceptance of the award, in
Spite of several reservations, particularly
about discrimination against primary school
teachers, an issue that was to rankle with the
NUT until it next resorted to industrial
action in 1967.

School meals supervision and unqualified
teachers, 1967

Supervising school meals had annoyed
teachers for years. It first appeared on the
agenda of the NUT Conference in 1948,
and by 1965 it was being debated as a subject
for industrial action.

Two years later, after expressing its ‘deep
resentment’ at the response to the Union’s
demand for relief from compulsory dinner
duty, the Scarborough conference set up an
ad-hoc committee with full powers to plan a
phased withdrawal from school meals super-
vision and to plan sanctions against unqualified
teachers.

They were issues on which the rank and

The 1961 Burnham settlement did not match
teachers' hopes. Some of them walt outside
the House of Commons to lobby MPs and
others display protest posters outside Hamilton
House.

file membership were obviously prepared to
act. After the ad-hoc committee had made a
survey of 627 local associations, which
showed that 543 supported action on school
meals and 594 on unqualified persons, a
referendum in 48 areas gave a vote of about
22,000 out of 31,400 for going ahead with the
sanctions. Action involving 8,000 teachers in
18 areas was planned for the autumn with the

— —

|

objectives of improving the basic salary scale,
obtaining a removal of the primary-secondary
differential in salaries, and ending school
meals supervision and the employment of
unqualified persons.

Once under way, the sanctions won massive
support from members in the areas concerned.
Although negotiations were going on con-
tinuously with the Government and the local
authority associations, the Union held
referenda in another 17 areas, and decided to
extend the sanctions to six new areas in
November. Yet before they started, an agree-
ment was reached with the local authorities,
under which it was agreed to set up individual
working parties to review the primary-
secondary differential, to agree on a with-
drawal of the clause empowering education
authoritics to compel teachers to supervise
meals, and to study the employment of
unqualified persons.

On all of its objectives, except the first,
the Union succeeded. The Burnham salary
agreement of 1969 improved the number of
special allowances in primary schools by
6,000. The obligation on teachers to supervise
meals was removed by the Government when
the working party reported; and Mr Edward
Short, Secretary of State for Education and
Science and a life-long member of the NUT,
announced in 1969 that after 1970 no un-
qualified teachers would be employed in
schools. He added, moreover, thar all grad-
uates would be required to go through a
year’s training, and that the period of pro-
bation for graduates was to be extended to
two years instead of one.

Such were four of the battles of the NUT
during the past §0 years. Any union, however,
is continuously engaged on a variety of fronts.
Some may seem insignificant and unexciting
by comparison, but all are crucial to the
members, or the section of the education
service concerned, and help them to feel
that a big and powerful Union in London,
engaged continually in confrontations with
Ministers and civil servants, still belongs
intimately to them. A survey of the Union’s
annual report for 1968, as the NUT appro-
ached its centenary, shows some of the areas
in which the Union was actively concerned.

The Law and Tenure department, for
example, recovered more than £26,000 on
behalf of members in compensation for
personal injuries. It approved full legal
assistance for the next of kin of members who
died in the Aberfan disaster, and obtained
substantial settlements for them. It was also
concerned with civic rights and removing
restrictions preventing teachers from partici-
pating in local government, with the Offices,
Shops and Railway Premises Act, with the

closed shop issue in three areas, with residen-
tial qualifications in Wales, the tenure of
married women teachers, confidential reports
by Inspectors, the Code of Professional
Conduct, and the scale of fines for assault
and non-attendance proceedings.

The Education department had ranged over
the following subjects: The Schools Council
(and all its committees), Supply and Training

of Teachers (including the government of
colleges of education, the employment of

_ unqualified persons, teaching practice, in-
_ Service training, degrees, student grants and

staffing in crisis areas), examinations, ancillary
helpers, primary education (including the
Plowden Report, parent-teacher relations,
and corporal punishment), school meals and
milk, the public schools Commission, the
youth service, the social services, cuts in
educational expenditure, special education,
civil defence, school terms and _ holidays,
married women returners, the employment
of school children, teacher representation,
the treatment of violent refractory children,
decimal currency, middle schools, the Indus-
trial Training Act, the migration of children
at secondary school stage, the comprehensive
school, and absenteeism and delinquency.

Other subjects that it had discussed
included: road safety, Union representation
on television education committees,
distribution of gift packs by teachers, size
of classes, liability for pupils visiting industry,
levies on library books, draft DES documents,
training in driving for children at school,
the Open University, purchase tax on
mathematical apparatus, and ad-hoc com-
mittee on raising the school-leaving age,
and fees for classes in leisure time activities.

Apart from an unprecedented level of
activity in support of the Union’s sanctions
on school meals supervision, the Publicity
and Public Relations department had
organised four regional conferences on The
School of the Future, seven public meetings
on the Plowden Report, sponsored the
Young Film Makers Competition and the
fourth national Careers Convention. It had
also issued Union publications ranging from
‘Education of the Immigrant’? and ‘Teacher
Training’ to its booklet, ‘University and
College Entrance’, and ‘Teachers and Pro-
bation’, and had published 550,000 copies of
the pamphlet, ‘Why Teachers’ Pay matters
to You and Your Children’, and 150,000 copies
of a pamphlet on the salaries campaign,
apart from all its day-to-day work of press
releases and answering inquiries from news-
papers.

It had been another busy year for the
NUT.

Apart from the action over the supervision
of school meals in 1967, the Union by 1969
had initiated no widespread action on any
scale in defence of its members’ interests
since the 1930s. Among the rank and file
membership, however, salaries were becoming
an increasingly angry issue, and, against
initial opposition from the Executive, dele-
gates at the annual conference in Douglas,
Isle of Man, carried a resolution calling for
the submission of an interim salary claim.
Although the Union had only that month
signed a new two-year salary agreement,
raising the basic scale to £860 to £1,600 over
14 years, the delegates called for an interim
increase in April, 1970. They added, more-
over, that the Executive was to submit a
claim for a ten-year scale of £1,000 to £2,000
for the 1971 settlement.

At the time of the debate, the Government’s
incomes policy was still operating, allegedly
imposing a strict limit of 34 per cent on all
salary increases. Yet, even as the Conference
met, BOAC pilots, after striking, were given a
settlement well beyond the limit; and as the
months followed several groups, including
notably dustmen and miners, won increases

which seriously breached the official policy.
An indication of the resentment that was
sweeping through the profession was given
during the summer term when an _ unpre-
cedented number of Inner London teachers
called a half-day strike and marched in a
procession a mile long to County Hall and
on to Westminster. The march was 4
powerful indication to the Executive that the
membership meant business.

Over the summer holiday, the Executive
decided to submit a claim for a flat-rate
increase of £135 a year, a ten per cent rise
which would cost {£44m, to restore the
salaries of teachers to their July, 1967, level.
Once the size of the claim had been agreed,
the Union leadership entered into the cam-
paign enthusiastically and it was launched
with the unprecedented insertion of full-page
advertisements in Zhe and The
Guardian, stating : ‘“‘Full-time teacher wanted:
starting salary £13 a week’’, a reference to the
take-home pay of many young teachers,
drawn up by the Union's vigorous Publicity
department.

Zrmes

At the meeting of the Burnham Com-
mittee, however, the management panel
offered teachers an increase of only £50 a
year. At a hurriedly-summoned meeting that
night, the Executive unanimously approved
plans for strike action on both a local anda
national basis, and the first followed the next
day and there were several more in the same
week, when teachers staged half-day strikes.
The action that followed, unprecedented in
the history both of the Union and of the state
education system, took two forms. One was
small-scale action, one or half-day strikes,
which were supported by more than 150,000
Union members in the month following the
meeting of the Burnham Committee. The
second was two-week strikes, supported by
4,000 members (after 5,000 schools had
volunteered their support) in 249 schools,
action taken jointly with the NAS, whose
members struck in 77 schools. It was the first
occasion on which the Union had started
strike action on anything approaching a
national basis, and the effect, once the
teachers had shown their strength, was
swift.

Any historian has to end his story some-
where, even when the events he is describing
are still continuing and unresolved. At the
end of December, 1969, however, the militant
campaign was showing results. Newspaper
polls showed that teachers were supported by
parents. The Secretary of State for Education
and Science declared his own sympathy.
Many MPs rallied in support of the teachers,
and editorials in the newspapers almost
unanimously supported the salaries cam-
paign. So much support was forthcoming,
even from leaders of education authorities,
that the management panel was about t0
make a new offer of up to £85. It was not
going to be good enough for the NUT and
it was preparing still further two-week
strikes at the start of 1970. As it approached
its centenary, it was returning to the militant
traditions on which it was founded in 1879:
Its membership was roused as it had nor been
for 50 years, and it looked as though it would
get the results that rewarded the similar
efforts of its founders a century before.

Free secondary education — for all

The 1944 Education Act — the famous ‘Butler Act’ — was an end and a
beginning: the end of more than ten years of controversy over the future
shape of the education service, and the beginning of an era of reform and
expansion which still continues. The Act set up a new Ministry of
Education with increased powers and divided the whole State system
into three parts — primary, secondary and further education. All children

were now to be educated in separate secondary schools after the age of 11;

grammar school fees, except in direct grant schools, were to be abolished ;
the school leaving age was to go up to 16, although no date was fixed for
this; and for the 16-18 age group there were to be county colleges for
further training. The Act was welcomed by the teachers for, as

Sir Frederick Mander, general secretary of the NUT commented, it
removed the word elementary, and with it a badge of inferiority, from
British education.

1944 Act

1. The ‘all-age’ elementary school had catered
for children from 5 to 14, and the Act of 1944
sounded its death knell. But it was along time
dying and in 1967 there were still 71 ‘all-age’
schools catering for about 16,000 children, most
of them in rural areas.

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2. For most children the break in schooling at 11
meant an examination or test, soon to become
famous as the Eleven Plus. The 1944 Act did not
make a tripartite system of secondary education
mandatory, but most education authorities
decided to divide children between grammar,
secondary modern and, in some areas, technical
schools. The number of grammar school

places varied from 10.5 per cent to 45 per cent
from area to area.

3. Few technical schools were ever built and in
most areas the Eleven Plus was a choice
between the existing grammar schools or the
new secondary modern schools, many of which
were converted elementary schools. But as
money became available naw secondary modern
schools were built - this one at Tooting was the
LCC's first post-war secondary building and
cost £56,000.

The religious issue

One of the fiercest controversies leading up to the 1944 Act was that over
religious education and the role of the churches in the schools. The NUT
bitterly opposed church interference with, or inspection of religious
education classes or any test of the religious beliefs of teachers. In the
event, the Act included a ‘conscience clause’ for teachers, who were not to
be penalised in any way for their religious opinions, or lack of them, nor
compelled to give religious instruction. R.E. was to be Christian but
non-denominational in the local authority schools, and to be taught
according to an agreed syllabus worked out by the teachers, the churches
and the local authorities together.

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1. Prayers had traditionally been part of the
school day and the 1944 Act made a daily act of
worship obligatory. Parents retained the right to
withdraw their children on conscientious
grounds.

2. The only ‘compulsory’ school subject -
religious education. tn most schools the
Christian year starts with the traditional
nativity play.

3. The voluntary schools - originally founded by
the religious denominations - retained their
semi-independent status under the Act. About
one-third of all schools now have voluntary
status and the amount of freedom they have in
giving denominational instruction varies
according to the amount of public money they
receive. About 8,000 are run by the Church of
England, 2,000 by the Roman Catholic Church
and a couple of hundred by other denominations.

The outsiders

The 1944 Act demanded provision for many of the children previously
thought to be outside the scope of the education service. Nursery
education was to be encouraged, although not made obligatory, because
the Act dealt only with children over five, and education was to be
provided for school-age children with any kind of handicap, physical or
mental. Local authorities were also made responsible for finding out how
many children in their area required treatment and were obliged to
examine children to find out their needs. Teaching had to be provided for
the blind, partially sighted, deaf, partially hearing, delicate, educationally
subnormal, epileptic, maladjusted, physically handicapped and those
with speech defects.

4. There are about 74,000 children in special
schools, many of them residential. Attendance
is compulsory until the age of 16 and some
schools keep children longer for further
education and training. The schools are run by
the local authorities and by voluntary
organisations.

5. Expansion of nursery education, although
suggested by the 1944 Act, has been held back
by successive financial crises and by the
shortage of teachers. Local authorities have
concentrated resources on provision for school-
age children and permission for the building of
nursery classes or schools has been almost
impossible to obtain since the Act.

; 6. Since the Act it has been found possible to

help other types of handicapped child for whom
no previous provision was made — there are new
schools for spastic children, like this little boy
learning to form his words, and for aphasic,
dyslexic and autistic children.

;

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Opportunity

After 1944, the efforts of the NUT were
devoted to ensuring that the promise of
Secondary Education for All, the vision of
the Hadow Report which was now enshrined
in the new Act, was fulfilled. Nor was the
let-down so rapid as it had been after 1918.
The school-leaving age was raised to 15 in
1947, and the laborious process of reorganising
secondary education was got in hand. Yet
the Union still had an agenda of new reforms.
One was equal pay for women, on which it
persisted until victory was achieved in the
mid-1950s (and which is described elsewhere).
It was also fighting for the money needed to
implement all the provisions of the new Act.
It was concerned about the duty of super-
vising school meals, about parity of esteem
for primary and secondary schools, about
school building, about the size of classes and
the different limits set for primary and
secondary schools, and especially about
professional status.

On all these issues, the agitation continued
throughout the next 20 years, but already
there were early signs of the untapped
potential that was now being brought to
light as a result of the new act, and which
was ironically to delay some of the progress
in implementing it. Mr I. Gwynne Rees,
president of the NUT in 1949, reported a
35 per cent increase in School Certificate
and a 90 per cent increase in Higher School
Certificate passes compared with 1938.
There were 66 per cent more teachers at
training colleges, state scholarships and
awards for further education had doubled,
and the school building programme for 1949
was £55m compared with £23m in 1948.
The NUT, however, was already detecting
the issue which was to become paramount
by the 1960s. Unless primary schools were
given a better deal, Mr Rees argued, the gap
between the gifted and the less gifted would
grow still wider. At the same conference,
an indication of the preoccupations of the
Union were given when delegates passed a
resolution appealing for a more rapid imple-
mentation of the 1944 Act, a substantial
imcrease in school and college building,
priority for primary schools, a rapid expansion
of permanent facilities for teacher training,
immediate implementation of recommen-
dations on university awards as a step towards
university admission by merit only, a with-
drawal of the ban on nursery school develop-
ment, and an expansion of higher technical
education.

It was not long, however, before the familiar
pattern re-established itself. The early 1950s
saw the country once again faced with the
need for economy. It was the period of the
cold war. Money was being poured into
defence and the terrible twins—the trend

on the educational stage. The bulge was the
Steep rise in the birthrate after the war,
which meant not only new schools but also
new houses. As Mr A. Granville Prior, NUT
president in 1951, pointed out, it also meant
that the education budget could afford no
luxuries, only the bare necessities. More than
1,100,000 school places had to be built
between 1947-53 solely to put roofs over
children’s heads. The trend, which made its
real appearance somewhat later, was the
increasing tendency for more pupils to stay
at school beyond the minimum leaving age;
one of the hopes, of course, of the 1944
Act, but which when fulfilled raised costs.
Although the size of the education budget
increased relentlessly, it was increasing
simply to stand still, and it meant that many
of the features of the new Act, the idea of
County Colleges in particular, were delayed
or never implemented.

As usual, teachers acknowledged that
progress was being made, but argued that it
was not fast enough. A decade after the Act
had been passed, during the years 1955, 1956
and 1957, three successive presidents, Herbert
Nursey, Edward Britton (eventual successor
to Sir Ronald Gould as General Secretary),
and John Archbold, summed up the mood of
the Union and defined its new commitments.

Nursey argued that teachers could be
proud of their results since 1944. Twice as
many students were going to university,
successes at the GCE, now at a higher
academic standard, were mounting, the cur-
riculum had been broadened, and the secon-
dary modern schools were doing valiant work.
In 1954, 24,000 pupils at them had opted to
stay on after 15 and 5,500 had sat the GCE.
More than 2,000 new primary schools and
over 600 new secondary schools had been
built. There were 80,000 extra teachers and
380,000 young men and women were on
part-time day release - but nearly half the
children were still in oversize classes.

Yet Britton pointed out that the forces of
ignorance, apathy and self-complacency were
still rampant, and that the successes had been
achieved at the price of heroic work by
teachers. Steadily and inescapably, conditions
had deteriorated, he declared.

‘Wages have declined in value until each one
of us can look round and see unskilled and
socially unimportant jobs being better paid;
the actual classroom work of teaching has
steadily become more exacting and more
exhausting, and duties outside the classroom
have become more oppressive; and, in spite of
many new school buildings, taking the field as a
whole, the conditions of overcrowding and
inadequate provision have become steadily
worse. People outside the schools talk about
the past ten years as a period of great educational
advance. In a sense they are right. The school~

leaving age has been raised; the vastly increased
numbers of children have all been found places
at school, and much progress has been made
towards reorganisation of full-range schools
into primary and secondary schools. But only
those who work in the schools know how much
of that progress has depended on teachers’
self-sacrifice, teachers’
teachers’ willingness to accept more onerous
conditions of work for the sake of better
educational opportunity for the child, But the
teachers know, and the teachers look around and
see that all the thanks they have received have
been a steadily declining standard of living
and a succession of ill-informed canards in press
and public platform blaming the profession for
juvenile delinquency, juvenile illiteracy, juvenile
indiscipline, and all the other ills the times are
heir to. It is hardly surprising that this mounting
sense of frustration should have shown trself in
angry meetings, angry public protest and in
talk of sanctions’.

Improvisations, and

Out of the contemplation on the decade
since 1944 and the resolutions that were
persistently debated at annual conferences,
three major pre-occupations for the Union
emerged: an improvement in the professional
status of the teacher, an ‘onslaught’ on school
building conditions, and a refinement of the
concept of equality of opportunity. Britton
argued that the Union and the education
service should already be planning for the
year, 2,000, and both Nurscy and Archbold
suggested that the Government’s priorities
should be to arrest early leaving, an allevia-
tion of the defects suffered by children
because of social conditions, increased main-
tenance allowances for pupils of 1§ plus, an
attack on overcrowded schools and oversize
classes, and the institution of three-year
training for all teachers.

The status of teachers was a personal
preoccupation of Sir Ronald Gould and it
had been a frequent theme of his annual
addresses to Conference. It now became one
of the principal issues of the NUT. At the
1954 Conference, Gould had outlined five
aims: only trained teachers should be allowed
to teach, qualifications should not be easily
achieved, salaries and conditions of work
should be improved, teachers should unite,
and they should act professionally as indivi-
duals. A year later he returned to the same
theme and appealed to Lord Hailsham to name
an early date for the institution of three-year
training. His timing was opportune. Seven
thousand extra teachers a year were being
produced by the training colleges, and the
staffing position was improving. The peak of
the bulge was nearly through the schools.
Yet if school rolls were dropping some
authorities might be tempted to start skimping
on teachers. Three-year training would also
stop any threat of unemployment.

On this occasion, Sir Ronald outlined a
three-fold strategy: a three-ycar course,
training for all new entrants, and the elimina-
tion of all unqualified teachers. A degrce of
ruthlessness was necessary, he said, if
teachers were to achieve professional status.
‘To being with, there must be more rigorous
selection of students on entry. We must demand
Ingher academic standards: exceptional entry
should be reserved for the really exceptional,
Then, the content of the courses must be
mmproved. The three-year course will fail us if
u degenerates into a two year course at a
slotver Pace. The academic standard should be
high. Every student should study one or more
subjects to degree standard. Again, the standard
required at the end of the course must be
stepped up... It is our dury to aim at standards
for the teaching profession a high as for other
professions. After that, 11 cxill be ludicrous to
leave unchanged the position of untrained
teachers, and the door should be barred to any
future entrants of this kind. Our profession
has been wide open to archacologists, linguists,
physicists, chemisrs, doctors, dentists, lawyers
and musicians. W'e have admitted them all
with teacher training. W'e must bar the door
to them unless they take at least one year’s
training as teachers. If we did this at the same
ume as establishing the three-year course,
teachers’ qualifications would be reduced to a
much simpler pattern, All new entrants would
be trained and all would have some claim to
scholarship’,

The appeal was answered only a few years
later, and the three-year course started in
September 1960, The two other strands of the
Strategy had to wait until a member of the
NUT, Mr Edward Short, was Secretary of
State for Education and Science, until once
again there was a threat of unemployment
amongst teachers, and, in one_ instance,
until the NUT took industrial action in 1967.
Unqualified teachers will no longer be
employed in schools after 1970, mainly
because of the NUT sanctions, and Mr Short
announced in 1969 that all graduates were to
undergo in future a two, instead of a one year,
period of probation, or to hold a Diploma in
Education.

On school building conditions, the NUT
was as good as its word. It mounted a
relentless lobby for improvements, which
culminated in the Campaign for Educational
Advance in 1963. A survey by the Executive
in 1958 had disclosed what Miss A. F. Cooke,
the president, described as a ‘pitiful’ story of
appalling school conditions. A £300m school
building programme over five years had been
Promised, but it was still not enough, she
warned, to deal with schools with bucket
Sanitation, or without electric light, storage
Space, cloakrooms, or rooms for the staff
and the head.

The crucial onslaught followed the publica-

tion in 1963 of the Union’s publication, The
State of Our Schools, describing a survey of
conditions in more than 22,000 schools
during 1962. The disclosures from it were
Put across to the public in a major publicity
exercise which was followed by the Campaign.
Again, the story seemed pitiful.

One in two primary schools dated from the
19th century. One in five were overcrowded.
Two out of five had outside lavatories.

Seventeen per cent had no hot water. More
than 40 per cent had no staff room. Two out
of three sccondary modern schools were
overcrowded and more than half needed
specialist teachers for backward children.

More than half the grammar schools were
overcrowded and one in five was without
stage facilities, separate dining rooms, or a
gymnasium. A 17 per cent annual turnover

A press conference following Burnham
negotiations. Sir Ronald Gould answers

reporters’ questions.

among women teachers was disclosed and an
urgent need for more science and mathe-
matics teachers, amounting to 28 per I00
schools in mathematics.

Two years later, the Government, after a
long delay, published a report on its own
survey of school building standards, also
made in 1962. It supported the results of the
NUT survey and helped to underline them.
Two million children were spending their
formative years in severely sub-standard
buildings and 500,000 were still dining in
their classrooms. There were 17,200 schools
with mainly outdoor sanitation, 8,800 without
staffrooms, 7,500 dating from before 1875
and 15,200 from before 1902. The report
estimated that it would cost £1,368m to
bring all buildings up to contemporary
standards.

Equality of opportunity, a cause that the
Union had espoused since 1919, had been
the objective of the Butler Act, and some
progress had certainly been made towards its
fulfilment. There was more equality of
opportunity in the 1950s than in the 1930s,
but it was being taken mostly by the middle
classes, and huge pockets of deprivation still
persisted. After 1954, however, sociological
studies and a series of major reports from the
Central Advisory Council on Education,
(CAC) under Lord Crowther, Sir John
Newsom and Lady Plowden, coupled with
the report on Higher Education from a
Committee under Lord Robbins, started to
show the inequalities that still persisted
below the surface of an increasingly affluent
Britain, and to champion the cause of the
underprivileged.

The first report to show the influence of
social class on academic performance was
Early Leaving, published by the CAC (of
which Sir Ronald Gould was a member),
in 1954. It recommended improved main-

tenance allowances for deprived children
staying on at school beyond 15, as well as
legislation for the payment of family allow-
ances in respect of ali children still at school,
two reforms that had been advocated con-
stantly by the NUT.

Yet the series of major documents which
collectively presented a powerful indictment
of the inequalities that still persisted even in

1969 and which were to form the agenda for
the preparation of the next major act, started
with the Crowther Report in 1959. Set up to
consider the education of boys and girls
between 15 and 18, the Crowther Council
showed that only 12 per cent of the 17 year
olds and six per cent of the 20 year old age
groups were still in full-time education. It
criticised the waste of potential that the
country was tolerating, recommended the
raising of the school-leaving age to 16
berween 1966 and 1968 and the introduction of
County Colleges early in the 1970s. It also
advocated a 20-year programme to ensure
that by 1980 half the boys and girls in the
country should be in full-time education
until 18. Using the new evidence from
sociological studies, it suggested that early
leaving was a social rather than an academic
phenomenon, and demonstrated that many
pupils failed to fulfil their academic potential
because of the social limitations of their
family backgrounds. Its philosophy, which
was to be restated and refined in all the
succeeding reports, was expressed early in
the Report:
‘This report is about the education of English
boys and girls aged from 15 to 18. Most of
them are not being educated. But they are all
at a highly impressionable age, with their
characters still being formed, and, except in rare
instances, with their minds still capable of
considerable development. It seems to us clear
that it is both necessary and practicable greatly
to extend in the next few years the provision
made for boys and girls in their later teens . . .
We could not as a nation enjoy the standard of
living we have today on the education we gave
our children a hundred or even 50 years ago.
If we are to build a higher standard of living,
and—what is more important -if we are to
have higher standards of life, we shall need a
firmer educational base than we have today.
Materially and morally, we are compelled to go
forward’. ; —
The next brief to the CAC, no’
Sir John Newsom, was to con!

education between 13 and 16 of pupils of
average or less than average ability. The
Newsom Council reported in 1963 and
followed Crowther, as well as the principal
recommendation made to it by the NUT, in
recommending the raising of the school
leaving age to 16. It showed that four out of
five schools for Newsom children (as they
came to be known), were seriously deficient.

Sir Ronald Gould addressing the conference of
the World Confederation of Organisations of the
Teaching Profession, of which he is president.

Schools for Newsom children, moreover, got
less than their fair share of resources and
more than their fair share of the least well-
qualified teachers. It also followed Crowther
in suggesting that many children were being
held back more by social than genetic factors,
although school standards were rising sharply.
Another recommendation, which was to be
expanded in the Plowden Report, was that a
joint working party should be set up on
Social Services in Slum Areas. Yet another,
demonstrating that the NUT ‘onslaught’ was
bearing fruit, called for accelerated action to
remedy the ‘functional deficiencies’ of the
schools.

Above all, however, the report pleaded for

a change of heart towards the pupils whose
education it was considering. ‘Our concern’,
it said, ‘is lest the relatively unspectacular
needs of the boys and girls with whom we
are concerned should be overlooked. They
have had far more than their share of
thoroughly unsatisfactory buildings and des-
perately unsettling changes of staff. Given
the opportunities, we have no doubt that they
will rise to the challenge which a rapidly
developing economy offers no less to them
than to their abler brothers and sisters. But
there is no time to waste. Half our future is
in their hands. We must see that it is in good
hands’.

Yet apart from its own recommendations,
the Newsom Report was the occasion for a
momentous breakthrough in official thinking
and in the definition of equality of oppor-
tunity. It was heralded in the foreword to the
report written by Sir Edward Boyle, Minister
of Education. One of the most significant
movements of the past 25 years, Sir Ronald
Gould now thinks, was the swing in educa-
tional philosophy from its belief in pre-

_ destination, or that all children are born with
fixed abilities, to a belief in salvation, or that
Durture ig as crucial as nature. The first

official breakthrough for the nurture theorists
arrived when Sir Edward, writing of the
Newsom children, said: ‘Their potentialities
are no less real, and of no less importance,
because they do not readily lend themselves
to measurement by the conventional critieria
of academic achievement. The essential point
is that all children should have an equal
opportunity of acquiring intelligence and of

Sir Geoffrey Crowther, who chaired the
committee which reported on the education of
boys and girls between 15 and 18.

developing their talents and abilities to the
full’.

Updating the concept of equality of
opportunity had so far covered the 1§ to 18
and the 13 to 16 age ranges. Attention then
turned to the over 18s and to higher educa-
tion. The NUT, in its evidence to the
Robbins Committee, said that one thing was
certain. The theory of a more or less fixed
pool of ability had been proved wrong by the
educational developments of the past decade.
There was at present a considerable waste of
human resources because of the inadequate
provision of education in general, and of
higher education in particular. It was clear.
the Union added, that there was room for
expansion without any lowering of standards.
It also reiterated its aim of a four-year
trained, all-graduate profession. The NUT
was not, of course, the only organisation that
raised doubts about a fixed pool of ability,
but the argument was nevertheless resoun-
dingly championed when the Robbins Com-
mittee reported in 1963.

It recommended that by 1980 the
percentage of the age group going into higher
education should be raised from eight to
17 per cent and that the student population,
216,000 in 1962-63, should expand to 390,000
by 1973 and to 560,000 by 1980 (all of which
targets were to be substantially exceeded).
Another major recommendation was that
responsibility for the Colleges of Education
should be transferred to the universities,
it also mooted the idea of the Bachelor of
Education degree, a reform advocated for
years by the NUT, and which was eventually
adopted, although the Colleges themselves
stayed outside the universities.

The axiom of the Committee, was that
higher education should be available for all
who were qualified by ability and attainment
to pursue it, a significant advance on the old
concept of equality of opportunity. Antici-

pating any challenge, the Report also offered
a vindication of its recommendations, a
vindication which foreshadowed the develop-
ment of theme Secondary Education for All
into the theme for the second century of
state education of Higher Education for All.
It said: ‘Conceiving education as a means, we do
not believe that modern societies can achieve
their aims of economic growth and higher
cultural standards without making the most of
the talents of their citizens... To realise the
aspirations of a modern conuniunity as regards
both wealth and culture, a filly educated
population is necessary. But beyond that,
education ministers to ultimate ends, in develo-
ping man’s capacity to understand, to contem-
plate and to create, and it is characteristic of
the aspirations of this age to feel that, where
there 1s capacity to pursue such activities,
there that capacity should be fostered. The good
Society desires equality of opportunity for tts
citizens to become nor merely good producers
but also good men and women’.

It was nevertheless the third major CAC
document, the Plowden Report on Children
and their Primary Schools, which most
significantly shifted public mood, It
appeared art the end of an epoch when most
of the attention had been concentrated on
secondary schools and university expansion;
and when public interest, stimulated by a
new generation of young parents who were
showing an unprecedented interest in state
education, was starting to turn towards the

the

primary schools. It was now 23 years since
the last major Education Act and a new Act
was being mooted. Above all, there was the
cumulative impact of four major reports in
eight years. After the stately succession of
Crowther, Newsom, Robbins, and Plowden,
the next leap forward was irresistible.

The NUT, a union which speaks above all
for the primary school, had also been shar-
pening the public appetite. The question of
oversize classes in primary schools was
raised by G.A. Chappell in his presidential
address in 1961 and at the same conference
Sir Ronald Gould, always ahead of official
thinking, had proposed five measures to
raise the status of the primary school and to
prevent a split in the teaching profession.
Work in primary schools should be made
more attractive financially, he said. The social
and educational merits of the primary school
should be extolled by teachers and the Govern-
ment. Training should be made compulsory
for all teachers, and training colleges should
set their academic standards higher. The
public mood, therefore, was obviously ripe
for Plowden.

Nine out of ten teachers in primary schools
belong to the NUT, and the Union siezed
its opportunity to canvass the Council
energetically. Ail of its local associations were
invited to help in the preparation of evidence
and more than 1,000 comments and answers
from replies to a questionnaire went into the
document, ‘First Things First?, which was
submitted to the Council. It was described
as a milestone in the Union policy. First
Things First warned the Plowden Council in
particular about the false prophets who would
recommend that it should plan a primary
school system which could function within
the nation’s allegedly limited resources. No

similar opportunity of stating the needs of
the nation’s younger children might occur
for a very long time, the Union said. It was
also likely that parliament would soon need
to rewrite the 1944 Act, and the philosophy
and content of any new Act would be pro-
foundly influenced by what was said by
Crowther, Newsom, Robbins, and in this
Instance, Plowden.

It went on: ‘A study of the major acts of
this century shows that they are always
Programmes of future development rather
than statements of aims already attained.
The NUT pleads for a consideration of the
problems of the primary school that will not
merely offer solutions for present difficulties
but will boldly outline plans for its future
development’. The document made a host of
recommendations, including nursery educa-
tion from three and infant education from
the start of the school year in which a child
was five, both of which were endorsed and
expanded by the Plowden Council. It also
anticipated in embryo the major recom-
mendation of the Council, when it proposed
special attention for primary schools in the
Problem areas of big cities and urged that
education authorities needed special help if
there was to be any equalisation of educational
Opportunity between areas of unequal develop-
ment.

Such special priority, in the event, was to
form the basis for the major proposal by the
Plowden Council~the establishment of
educational priority areas (EPAs), coupled
with the concept of ‘positive discrimination’
as a matter of national policy in favour of
schools in deprived areas in order the make a
reality of equality of opportunity. Now, for
the first time, it had been recognised that it
Was not enough simply to wave some magic
Government wand and murmur Equality of
Opportunity, and just hope it would occur.
The Council also suggested criteria for
assessing which areas most needed special
help and where educational handicaps were
reinforced by social handicaps.

_The acceptance of the principle of positive
discrimination by the Government, when Mr
Crosland, Secretary of State, announced a
special £16m building programme to help
schools in EPAs, when the Burnham Com-
mittee agreed to pay an extra £75 a year to
teachers working in them, and when Mr
Short sanctioned the first nursery school

Lord and Lady Plowden. Lady Plowden gave
her name to the Plowden Report on primary
schools.

meee SPE

building programme since the war, and
directed it to the EPAs, was perhaps the most
significant educational and social advance of
the 1960s.

Meanwhile, the Union had not been
distracted from its ordinary work. Several
important gains for teachers were being
consolidated. It was also starting to look
forward to its centenary and to look back on
what had been achieved since 1870. The next
major step for teachers, according to Dame
Muriel Stewart, president in 1964, was full
professional freedom, and she detected two
significant straws in the wind. One was the
establishment of the Certificate of Secondary
Education, a nationally recognised examina-
tion for the 40 per cent of children immedi-
ately below and overlapping with the GCE
group, and largely meant for secondary
modern schools. What was new about the
CSE was that teachers were given new pro-
fessional responsibilities for the examination.
There was a majority of teachers, and of the
NUT, on the governing councils, its examina-
tion committees and its subject panels. The
second step forward was the Schools Council,
established in 1964, to study and report on
the curriculum, teaching methods and
examinations, and to stimulate changes.
Originally it was greeted with suspicion.
Teachers feared that the Ministry was trying
to centralise control of the curriculum, but
when the Council was established represen-
tatives of teachers formed a majority of its
50 members. It also upheld the independence
of teachers and the schools for their own
work. Dame Muriel Stewart became its
second chairman and it was eventually seen
by the NUT as one of the most promising
new developments of the decade. The way
towards two other momentous reforms was
also being paved. Sir Edward Boyle had
committed the Government to the raising of
the school-leaving age to 16 in 1970, and
Mr Crosland announced in 1965 that all
education authorities were being asked to
submit plans to start comprehensive schools,
so initiating the move towards universal
comprehensive education.

After publication of the Plowden Report in
1967, the need for reforms was widely
accepted, only the money to put them into
effect was wanting. It was in 1967, ironically,
that the aspirations released by the makers of
the 1944 Act ran head on into the nation’s
persistent economic crisis. Spending on
education had been increasing at an average
rate of about ten per cent a year for twenty
years. Suddenly, the Government decided
that the country should start living within
its means. After a long debate, the Govern-
ment announced in January 1968 that the
raising of the school leaving age was to be
postponed for two years, against the over-
whelming opposition of the education service,
in which the NUT figured prominently.
Suil worse, in the view of educationists, was
the announcement that spending on education
was to be limited to annual increases of
under four per cent in real terms. Once
again, the NUT was in the forefront of
the campaign against the drastic economy
measures.

The NUT conference in 1968 deplored
the postponement of the raising of the school

leaving age, which it declared would deny
opportunities to the under-privileged child,
threaten the implementation of the Plowden
Report, delay the satisfactory reorganisation
of secondary education, and restrict the
output of better trained and skilled man-
power. Sir Ronald Gould declared that the
socially under-privileged needed nursery
schools, better built and equipped primary
schools, better staffing and the raising of the
school leaving age even more than the
socially well-provided.

‘I believe’, he said, ‘that it is morally and

socially indefensible that those living in the
impoverished, decaying centre of a city have
much poorer opportunities than those
living in the lusher, expanding and developing
suburbs. I believe that it is morally and
socially indefensible that less than a third of
children remain at school after 1§ in the
Northern region compared with more than
half in the South East’.
‘I believe that implementing Plowden, Newsom
and Crowther would do more for racial harmony
than any Race Relations Act, and more for
personal satisfaction, social harmony and
economic well-being than anything else that
could be done by Government or by local
authorities’,

Sir Ronald also outlined what the new
limit on spending would mean: the employ-
ment of fewer teachers, fewer ancillaries and
the sacking of part-time teachers; fewer
audio-visual aids, a cut in capitation allow-
ances, a blow to in-service training, and
deferment of spending on the maintenance
and decoration of schools, as well as of school
building itself. Some education authorities
were forced to prune their minimum budgets
by up to £1m in 1969.

Yet at the 1969 conference, and in his
farewell address to the Union, Sir Ronald also
vividly underlined the dilemma that the
Government and the education service was
facing, and which seemed certain to dominate
the politics of education over the next decade.
Whatever were the intentions of Govern-
ments to restrict spending, he pointed our,
several factors were exerting an enormous
upward thrust on educational spending: the
steady democratisation of the education
system, the belief that education would
strengthen the country socially and economic-
ally, the insatiable needs of industry, and
the growth of Britain’s social conscience,
Crowther, he said, had pointed to waste of
potential beyond 15, Newsom to the waste of
half our future, Robbins to the waste of so
much university potential, and Plowden to
the waste because of social circumstances.
The more people exercised their consciences
about the quality of contemporary life, the
more they would turn to the education
system.

‘The history of the past 35 years has shown
that once the Government has fixed new
objectives, as it did in 1944, there is an
insistent demand to reach them. If in 1969
there is a new Education Act with new
objectives (say, for example, universal
comprehensive education), demands to im-
plement the Act will develop and every step
forward will cost money... Rising aspira-
tions must be accompanied by rising expen~

diture’, ‘

— \.

The economic circumstances that were
afflicting the education system were
depressing, but the NUT, in common with
the rest of the education service, was starting
to look towards the year, 2,000, and to think
about the new Education Act which was now
under active consideration by the Govern-
ment, and due for the early 1970s. Although
its discussion document, Jnto the 1970s, was
still proposing some measures that were
advocated before 1944, it also took a long look
forward, stepped into new areas, and pro-
posed a challenging programme of action
for the future. Its introduction was as good a
summary as any of what had been achieved
since 1870 and what was necded in the next
century of education. The nation, it said,
was now dependent as never before upon
education. Britain today had to maintain its
economic existence in a highly competitive
and highly industrialised world in which it
had few natural resources other than the
ability of its people. Living under the shadow
of the atom bomb, collectively and indivi-
dually, economically and spiritually, they
were subjected to pressures that would have

seemed impossible in 1870. Nor, moreover,

was the process at an end. The world of

2,000 AD would be far more complex than

the world of 1970 — yet this was the world for

which the schools were educating their
pupils. So a new Education Act was needed.

The state education system, shaped for the
needs of the 1940s, was no longer able to
meet the demands that would be made on it
in the 1970s.

It went on:—
‘The education service has developed at an
explosive rate since the passing of the 1944 Act.
Both quantitatively and qualitatively the growth
has been staggering. In 1938-39 education in
England and Wales cost {r14m. In 1967-68 it
was £1,891m. Between 1948 and 1967 the
school population increased from 5,356,000 to
7,328,000; and the numiber of teachers in
primary and secondary schools increased from
196,000 to 317,000. Over the same period the
number of children over 15 remaining in full-time
education rose from 187,000 to 519,000; the
number of full-time students in colleges of
education rose from 8,500 to 95,000, in further
education from 47,000 to 197,000; and in the
universities from 78,000 to 199,000. In summer
1953, 183,000 candidates obtained 592,000
passes in G.C.E. ‘O” Level; in 1965, 449,000
candidates obtained 1,252,000 passes. In
summer, 1953, 45,000 candidates obtained
83,000 passes in G.C.E. ‘A’ Level; in 1965,
147,000 candidates obtained 291,000 passes.
Moreover, although these criteria apply to
the upper end of the system, the growth has
been of the system as a whole. Development in
secondary and higher education cannot take
place unless there has been comparable growth
of the foundations laid in the primary schools.

“Yet in spite of this growth the outstanding
characteristic of the system is its profligate
waste of ability. There is waste of ability before
the child enters school, waste at 11 ~-, waste at
School leaving age, waste at entry to the sixth

Sorm, and waste at university entrance. There ts
waste of ability in innwnerable badly designed,

shadly equipped and badly staffed schools. The

distribution of educational resources
often means that the “‘haves” receive

positive discrimination in their favour, while
the “Shave nots” lose even the little that might be
theirs. The chances of geography, sex and
soctal class still place considerable barriers in
the way of equal opportunity. Boys still have
more than twice as much chance of going to
university as girls, while children brought up in
socially and culturally deprived ‘‘twilight areas”
of large towns have virtually lost their chance
of educational advancement before they reach
the secondary school, and probably before they
reach school age at all. This has been proved by
numerous reports in the past ten years. The
pessinusts who speak of exhausting the pool of
ability and scraping the bottom of the barrel
are ignoring the evidence.

‘A further point must not be overlooked, The
experience of advanced nations, and particularly
of America, indicates that with the advance of
technology, the uneducated and semi-educated
become progressively less employable. There is
no future for unskilled labour in a modern
society. The typical pattern in an advanced
nation 1s the existence of chronic unemployment
among unskilled workers alongside a chronic
shortage of labour in all occupations requiring a
high standard of education and skill. Moreover,
as technology advances, a high degree of skill
and a high level of education become more
nearly synonymous. Mechanical skills that do
not require a high level of education can be
performed by the sophisticated machines of
modern industry. To plan a future in which an
appreciable proportion of the population is at a
low level of education is to plan a future in
which there will be permanent unemployment.
In the past we have been prepared to budget
for a society based upon periodic unemployment;
to permit young people to grow up with a low
level of general education is to budget for a
future in which the community will contain a
permanent element of both unemployed and
unemployable persons.

‘Nor ts this confined to the economic aspects
of existence. The developments of technology
have made life incomparably more complex
than it used to be. Man today is presented at
once with more opportunities and more risks than
he ever was. His opportunities for the enjoy-
ment of music and the arts, of foreign travel
and an extended leisure are greater than they
ever were; yet modern techniques of mass
communication and mass persuasion have placed
him more completely at the mercy of the

The Secretary of State for Education and
Science, Edward Short, addressing the 1969
NUT conference at Douglas, Isle of Man.

propagandist and the demagogue. The quality of
his life depends more than ever upon his ability
to understand the world in which he lives and
the people with cehom he lives, and this is only
possible if he has a high standard of education.
‘The need therefore is for a large growth in
educational provision. In England and Wales
70°, have left school by the age of 16. By 1985
there should be at feast a million full-time
students in higher and further education and
ro million children and young people in schools
and junior colleges. This is not a luxury to be
afforded if we can; it 1s a necessity without
which the economic, social and cultural life of
the nation is in jeopardy. Britain is inexorably
moving along the path to an educationally
based technological society. It ts essential that
a new education act should lay the philosophic
and administrative foundations for a continued
and rapid educational growth. The 1944 Act
laid such a basis for the past 25 years, but it no
longer meets soctety’s teceds, A new act 1s
required to meet the challenge of the 19708.
Among the proposals that the NUT made
were :—
1. As a result of the nature versus nurture
argument over IQ, the duty of the parent
should be defined as to secure full-time
education for the child in an educational
institution approved by the Secretary of
State (a proposal with significant implications
for independent schools).
2. Pupils should be educated in accordance
with their parents’ wishes so far as is con-
sistent with the pursuit of public policy, so
that some parents could not frustrate national
educational policy.
3. School entry should be at the beginning of
the academic year when children reached the
age of five. Compulsory attendance should
begin on the September 1st after a child
reached his 4th birthday.
4.A duty should be laid on education
authorities to provide nursery education from
three, and they should be permitted to
provide it from two.
5. The school-leaving age should be raised to
16 in 1972.
6. There should be one set of regulations for
pupils between § and 16.
7. Legislation should be enacted to ensure a
universal system of comprehensive education.
8. There should be one set of regulations for
all education beyond 16.
9. There should be compulsory day-release to
19, organised by education authorities in
consultation with employers.

Lord Butler, who piloted
Parliament.

1944 Act through

10. Teachers should possess the same freedom
over the religious education syllabus as over
other parts of the curriculum, but under local
religious education advisory committees.
The corporate act of worship should not
necessarily be at the start of the school day.
Religious instruction should be voluntary
after 16.

t1. The Secretary of State should be given
the duty of approving the constitution of
education committees, so that they were not
emasculated by reforms in local government
and to ensure the representation of teachers.
12. Schools should have academic boards so
that teachers could get their views heard by
the Governors.

The document then went on to discuss

higher education, the controversial area where
most of the reforms during the next era of
educational development seemed certain to
occur, especially under the pressure of
steeply rising demand. As in 1944 the Union
had proposed a unified system of secondary
schooling, so in 1970 it recommended a
unified system of higher education. An
unplanned system, it said, was bound to
involve wasteful duplication of expensive
equipment and buildings, and an uneconomic
use of expert teaching manpower. The
colleges of education and the technical
colleges could not plan their courses if the
university sector of higher education was free
to develop what courses it liked, irrespective
of what was being done elsewhere. Nor could
the total output of students from higher
education bear any resemblance to employ-
ment prospects if the university sector was
not co-ordinated with the other two sectors
in considering national needs.
‘If the university sector is allowed to develop
independently of the rest of the higher education
system chance will play too large a part in the
composition of the total output of educated
manpower for any such certainty to exist. This
would be true if the university sector were
planned as a whole. When the university sector
1s composed of 44 separate universities each
jealously defending its right to be independent
of all the others, chance ts allowed to operate to
the point of chaos.

‘Nor are the harmful effects of the failure
to plan as a whole only felt within higher
education itself. The effects upon secondary
education are in some respects even more
serious. The multiplying of different university
faculty requirements has become a by-word.
There can even be different faculty requirements
for the same subject within the same university.
In consequence preparation for university
entrance imposes an altogether unnecessary and
wasteful fractionalisation of sixth form classes
upon every secondary school where pupils are
seeking university entrance. It imposes a degree
of specialisation upon the sixth forms of all
schools with pupils seeking university entrance
that is altogether harmful and because of the
need for the economic use of staff and equipment
the same specialisation also has to be imposed
upon young people who have no intention of
going to a university. Moreover, this domination
of secondary school curricula by the universities
is now showing signs of preventing the proper
development of new courses in the sixth forms
that are growing up in secondary schools.

‘For these reasons we are convinced that
machinery should be created which makes
possible the over-all planning of all higher
education, including the Open University. The
object of this planning should be to avoid the
wasteful duplication of courses in higher
education both as between university and
university and between university and other
institutions of higher education; to ensure that
the total out-put of students in each specialisation
in higher education bears a reasonable resem-
blance to the prospects of employment for that
specialisation, and by co-ordinating the entrance
requirements for various courses in higher
education to relieve the pressures for unnecessary
specialisation in secondary schools. The use that
is made of the machinery for planning, once it
has been created, should be subject to the normal
democratic processes by which governments are
influenced. But unless the machinery for
planning exists, the system of higher education
can only become more chaotic, more expensive,
and more wasteful of talent.

‘We recommend that the grant for all higher
education should be administered by a central
planning committee in which the Secretary of
State would have sufficient vote to enable him
to implement a national policy for higher
education. This Higher Education Grant
Committee would be responsible for the central
grant to each university and for an ear-marked
higher education element in the rate support
grant to local authorities. The national nature
of the colleges of education and of the higher
education element in colleges of further education
is already recognised by local authority pooling
arrangements. The present system of pooling
local authority expenditure in higher education
has a nwnber of unsatisfactory features and a
system of ear-marked grant supported by LEA
expenditure in the case of LEA establishments
of higher education and ear-marked grant
supported by endowment or private funds in the
case of universities would make possible a
sufficient variety of establishments within
which a national policy could be developed to
provide a vital system of higher education.

‘We are aware that such a system might be
opposed on the grounds that it would constitute
an unwarrantable interference with academic
freedom. The legitimate freedom of individuals

and of institutions is a central and important
issue in every society, but freedom results from a
careful balance of the freedoms that all indivi-
duals and all the institutions that constitute a
society would like to possess. It is not obtained
by imposing no restriction upon the actions of
one group of individuals at the expense of
imposing unreasonable restrictions upon the
actions of other groups. One aspect of academic

Dinnertime at a comprehensive school, Great
Baddow in Chelmsford.

freedom is the need to secure that the economic
resources that the nation devotes to the provision
of education are used to the greatest advantage
of the world community. Another 1s the need
to avoid regimentation and the stifling of
initiative in any part of the education system.
It is necessary to strike a balance between the
two and then to maintain that balance in the
ever changing situations produced by a developing
society. This can only be done if machinery is
first created for striking that balance and the
use 10 which the machinery is put is then sub-
jected to the controls by which a democratic
community resolves the clash of conflicting
interests in all the aspects of human activity
that impinge upon personal freedom. We
believe that, as far as higher education ts
concerned, either the machinery for striking a
balance does not exist or, if it does, its use ts
not apparent and it is therefore not being
subjected to normal democratic control. Our
proposals would ensure both the existence of the
machinery and its proper democratic control’,

Welfare in school

Following the 1944 Act the physical well-being of the children in the
schools became very much the concern of the local authorities, which took
over some of the responsibilities which had previously been carried by
voluntary child welfare organisations. The schools’ medical service kept a
close watch on the health of school-children and was a valuable help in
raising the general standards of child health during the post-war period.
School meals and free milk played a part, too, in producing the most
healthy generations of school children this country had ever seen.

2

1. Another daily ritual, which still survives in the
primary schools, was free school milk.

2. A bit of a struggle perhaps, but school meals
are available in all schools for children of all
ages as part of a subsidised service. Meals are
free for children from the poorest homes.

3. Immediately after the war, during the period
of food shortages, school dinner was often the
most nourishing meal of the day for some
children.

eae OANGER
noamay ToorH WEGLECT

4, Not so popular, perhaps, is the school dental

service which treats children free and also helps
with valuable campaigns to try to improve dental
hygiene in children's own homes.

\

5. An annual or biennial examination is not
enough to ensure continuous good health and
many schools now encourage health education
classes and courses which can touch on any
subject from dental decay to venereal disease.

Ok

NW

ze

= 6. Medical examinations for all school children
= keep a careful check on eye-sight and general
— = : health. Most defects discovered are minor but
Se Re the school health service plays an important

it

part in preventive medicine.

|

”

After the war Austerity

Education suffered as much as any other part of national life from the
ravages of six years of war. In 1945 the NUT put pressure on the
government to demobilize teachers and students as quickly as possible so
that a start could be made on increasing teacher numbers. Recruiting
for the Emergency Training Scheme was actually done in the various
theatres of war. As soon as hostilities were over a start had to be made on
restoring and rebuilding the 5,000 schools damaged in air raids. With a
shortage of buildings, a shortage of teachers, and inevitable confusion
caused by evacuation, the education service was stretched to its limits, and
a to add to its problems there was an immediate rise in the post-war
birth-rate. The ‘Bulge’ was imminent.

1. Appointed Minister for Economic Affairs in
1947, Sir Stafford Cripps has become a symbol
of the post-war period of austerity and
reconstruction. Economies hit education as
much as anything else and protests were led
by the NUT.

2. The pressure on space and resources led to
many experiments to put roofs over heads. This
is part of the first aluminium school - in

Bristol -— built by the Bristol Aeroplane
Company (Housing) Ltd.

3. One of the 5,000 schools damaged by enemy
action. This LCC school was hit in a daylight
rald in 1943 and over 60 children were killed.

Looking ahead

In spite of the post-war gloom, the Labour Minister of Education, Miss
Ellen Wilkinson, herself a former teacher and ‘scholarship girl’, was
determined to put the 1944 Act into effect. Against all the apparent odds
she gave the go-ahead for the raising of the school leaving age to 15 as
planned in April, 1947. ‘A gesture of faith’ the Daily Herald called it, and
the NUT, welcoming the decision, called for an immediate increase in
the supply of teachers to meet this new demand on the schools.

4. Ellen Wilkinson, though dogged by ill-health
and accidents, led a determined struggle to
create a new and better education service during
the period of post-war austerity.

5. A question mark hung over these ‘bulge’
children in the primary schools in the late 1940s.
Would there be enough teachers recruited in
response to the vigorous drives launched by
the government in 1947?

6. 1947 was the year of ‘The battle of the school
place gap’, a campaign in which HORSA (the
Hutting operation for the raising of the school
leaving age) and SFORSA (the School Furniture
Operation for the raising of the school leaving
age) played a major part. As part of the
programme for 14 year olds staying on these
Norfolk girls visited Holt Hall for a special
school leaving course.

After McNair

Hard on the heels of the Education Act came the McNair Report on
teacher training which called for a drastic reorganisation of the profession
and a significant increase in teachers’ salaries. The committee estimated
that the extra demands of the 1944 Act would require an extra 50,000 to
90,000 teachers and that the reorganised schools would eventually need
15,000 new teachers a year — double the number of entrants in 1938. The
report proposed the setting up of a Central Training Council, and the
organisation of the colleges on an area basis grouped around a university.
It also suggested an extension of the training course from two to three
years but this was rejected at that time because of the grave teacher
shortage.

1. One immediate consequence of the McNair
Report was the establishment of 20 Institutes of
Education, almost all based on universities, to
coordinate area training schemes. Theinstitutes
were responsible for courses, standards and
examinations for college students.

2. To help meet the post-war crisis the
Emergency Training Scheme recruited about
35,000 extra teachers, most of them in their 30s
and 40s, and about two-thirds of them men.
They were given a one year crash course, to be
followed by two years of part-time study, and
were taught in colleges improvised from army
camps, orphanages, hutments and, as here at
Trent Park, empty country mansions.

3. The National Advisory Council on the Supply,
Recruitment and Training of Teachers was
established in 1947 and a vigorous recruiting
campaign followed. But supply barely kept pace
with the increasing numbers of children in the
schools and 1950 saw over half the children in
maintained schools still in oversized classes.

The expanding union

151,000 to over 184,000 in the ten years from 1940 to 1950. During the
post-war years the Union played an increasing part as an educational
adviser to the government, playing a leading role in the setting up of the
National Foundation for Educational Research and reporting itself on
nursery education, transfer at eleven plus, and the secondary curriculum.
The post-war Burnham agreement introduced the ‘basic scale’ giving
parity to teachers with the same qualifications teaching in different types
of school. Yet battles over pay naturally continued and in 1949 a big new
salaries campaign was launched for an extra £3 a week. The union also
campaigned ior higher grants for students on the Emergency Training
Scheme, for new school buildings and for an expansion of university
education.

=e

The membership of the NUT continued to rise and increased from almost
|

Vis
LET BUTAIN « im; ,
LAG EHIND

4, Ronald Gould - elected general secretary of
the NUT in 1947 on the resignation of Sir
Frederick Mander. Now Sir Ronald, he was born
in 1904, the son of a Labour MP. He was elected
to the NUT Executive in 1936 and to the Vice
Presidency in 1942.

5. The equal pay struggle continued throughout
the 1940s. An average woman teacher's pay
was just over four-fifths of a man's.

6. The first post-war conference to be held out

of London by the NUT was in 1947 at
Scarborough.

wee

The primary revolution Expansion and change

The 1950s saw the start of a major revolution in the primary schools.

Stimulated by new research into the way children learn, this affected

every aspect of teaching, from reading to the ‘new mathematics’. It was

based on the philosophy that children have a natural curiosity which can

be harnessed to educational ends: they can learn, in fact, by discovery.

Changes were to a large extent teacher inspired and supported by the

NUT. All the major steps forward, already being taken in the best

schools, were enthusiastically endorsed in 1967 by the Plowden Report, 4. The Plowden Report called for ‘positive

a major document on educational reform. The Report proposed the first SERRE TERE eee Greek ae ge
change in the 1944 primary/secondary structure by favouring had played a big part in highlighting the

‘middle’ schools for children from eight to 12 years old. prob) siesat stars schsolekand, theoes einen!
responded to the public outcry with special

grants for schools in educational priority areas.

2. The new primary teacher is less likely to be
found standing in front of rows of children
sitting at desks than advising individuals or
small groups working on their own.

3. ‘Parents must not cross this line’! The
attitude was roundly condemned by the Plowden
Report and closer home and school links
encouraged. The NUT resisted attempts to take
these links too far and allow parents to ‘assist’
and encroach on professional status.

4. Changed methods of teaching were aided by a
rapidly expanding technology of education.
Radio had always provided schools broadcasts
and in the 1950s schools television expanded
rapidly. The 'telly' became a major influence

at home and in school.

§. The child-centred approach to primary
education was reflected in the new buildings
which the NUT had fought for for so long. This
school in Stake Newington, East London, with
bright sunny classrooms in which children can
move around freely, was built as early as 1952.

6. By the late 1960s arithmetic by rote was
becoming a thing of the past. This child is
learning about weight by experiment.

t the teacher shortage.

Fifteen to eighteen

The publication of the Crowther Report in 1959 was something of a
turning point in the schools. The report looked critically at the education
and training provided after the age of 15 and decided, in most cases, that it
was just not good enough. To a large extent the report repeated the
unfulfilled demands of the 1944 Act: it called for the raising of the school
leaving age to 16, the introduction of county colleges, for more GCE
courses in secondary modern schools and for an expansion of technical
education. And to make this programme of reform and expansion
possible it asked for another increase in the number of teachers to meet its
new demands. Crowther was the first of the major reports which

were to stimulate the programme of expansion and change which was
already gaining momentum in the early fifties.

1. The Crowther Report endorsed the tradition
of sixth form specialisation but made a plea for
better use of ‘minority time’ to ensure that
scientists were ‘literate’ and arts students
‘numerate’.

2. Technical education, the Report said, has
been neglected and should be expanded and
improved to provide a coherent national scheme
of practical education. Block release and
sandwich courses should replace part-time
study wherever possible.

3. Crowther also commented on the grave
shortage of science and mathematics teachers
and called for emergency measures to help solve

Half our future

1963 saw the second major report on secondary education — the Newsom
Report on children of ‘average or less than average ability’. This called
yet again for the raising of the school leaving age to 16, and this time the
government responded by promising to raise it at last in 1970. The
report considered in detail the education of the less able child who might
well be reluctant to stay on at school, and called for a serious effort to
overcome the problems of slum schools. As far as the syllabus was
concerned, the report called for a range of courses related to
occupational interests and paying attention to the personal and social
development of the pupils. The places of religious and sex education in
the curriculum should be rethought, the report suggested, and
relationships with parents strengthened.

4. The Newsom report called for imaginative
vocational courses for older pupils with
increasing links with further education, the youth
employment service and the adult world outside
school.

5. The report also recommended more extra-
curricular activities and suggested that schools
might experiment with a lengthened school day
for the 14 to 16 year old age group.

6. Many teachers seized on Newsom ideas and
Projects were started in secondary modern and
comprehensive schools. Many of them involved
‘Newsom' children in community activities with
old people or with handicapped children.

The road ahead

There was progress throughout the 1950s towards a variety of educational
goals, although as often as not the government and public opinion had to
be prodded by the NUT by publications like “This affects your child’ -a
1953 pamphlet calling for improved school buildings. The number of
children staying at school beyond the school leaving age increased
throughout the fifties and in 1955 there were more qualified applicants for
training college places than places available. But the teacher shortage

was by no means over, and the chronic lack of science teachers in
particular led to the introduction of special allowances —- always opposed
by the NUT - as an expedient to improve recruiting.

Fad

1. The new secondary schools were a far cry
from the old elementary schools they were
replacing: gymnasia, assembly halls and
Specialist facilities brought ‘parity of esteem’ in
terms of buildings if notin public acclaim.

2. Technology came to the aid of teachers still
too often overburdened by large classes. A
teacher in a language laboratory can give
immediate individual assistance to pupils
learning a language orally.

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3. Children's horizons widened with increasing
affluence and school journeys to all parts of
Western Europe became a feature of school
holidays. Later educational cruises by liner were
developed to carry large groups even further
afield.

A wider curriculum

A general broadening of the curriculum in both primary and secondary
schools was often inspired by the enthusiasm of individual teachers. No
holds were barred and experiments were carried out in every subject from
judo to driving a car, in school hours and out. In some secondary modern
schools particularly imaginative work was done with less able children
who revealed too often unsuspected talents for artistic and practical
subjects. Many became known for the outstandingly high quality of their
creative work. Leisure-time and athletic pursuits were also developed as
more schools gained access to playing fields and long lines of children
assembling in dril! order for formal PT became a sight of the past.

4, Golf, riding and athletics have all been
adopted as sports in some maintained schools.
This 13 year old at a South London
Comprehensive school is being taught the
rudiments of fencing.

5. Art education Increasingly developed from
drawing and painting and began to include
pottery, sculpture and collage. These Hertford-
shire teenagers have taken their massive
sculpture out of doors.

6. Not every child can learn the violin butin
some schools every child successfully mastered
arecorder. This Kingston school certainly
believes that every child can make some sort

of music.

The teacher’s changing role

Spurred on by the major educational reports, and by research work, much
of it NUT inspired, the role of the teacher underwent a subtle change
during the 1950s and 1960s. In some secondary schools discipline
became more informal, in others the teachers saw their role as more of a
guide than a mentor to older teenage pupils. The influence of the
Newsom report was especially strong, and its effects were not confined to
teaching of less academic children. There was also an increasing emphasis
in most schools on careers guidance, with a growing group of careers
teachers spending the major part of their time on this work.

Sex education became important too, as teachers realised that teenage
pupils needed a more broadly based approach to emotional and sexual
problems than a simple biology lesson could give. Some local authorities

experimented with special counsellors to help adolescents with their
problems.

1. Counselling parents has become a major part
of many head teachers’ work as children and
parents have come to realise the major
importance that education and qualifications will
have in their lives.

2. An informal group of senior pupils ata
London school discuss the problems ~ physical,
emotional and moral - surrounding The Pill.
The Plowden Report considered that even
primary teachers should b
children's questions on sex

ready to answer

3. The layout of many new schools ledtoa
breakdown of traditional groupings for some
lessons. Here senior pupils have a tutorialina

Coventry comprehensive school.

4. The General Certificate of Education replaced
the School Certificate in 1953 and Advanced
level soon became the key to higher education.
It was followed by the CSE, which gave teachers
a new freedom in designing their own courses.

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The examination explosion

The Crowther Report noted the trend in 1958: Robbins — in 1963 -
produced a startling answer — and by the end of the 1960s successive
governments had had to face an ever increasing pressure for provision of
all types of education beyond the school leaving age. Even though the
raising of the leaving age was constantly being put off — finally being
promised for 1972 — voluntary staying on after 15 became steadily more
popular. There were sharp disparities between numbers staying on in
different parts of the country: while over half the 15 year olds in London
and the South East were still at schoo] only 30 per cent of the age group
stayed on in the North East. These differences were naturally reflected in
the numbers of examination, college and university entrants in the
different regions but in spite of these discrepancies the trend was always
and everywhere upwards. The pressure affected all sectors involved in
educating the over 15s. In the schools the Certificate of Secondary
Education was introduced in 1965 to offer secondary modern pupils
another qualification at a lower standard than the General Certificate, and
in the colleges, universities and in technical education there was
relentless and increasing pressure for post-school places.

6. Crowther had called for a rapid expansion of
all forms of further education. Robbins
suggested the establishment of the National
Council for Academic Awards to organise
degree courses in technical colleges. In the late
1960s the more advanced technical institutions
were designated as polytechnics and singled
out for special development.

5. To meet the demands of increasing numbers
of well qualified school leavers the Robbins
Report recommended an unprecedented
expansion of university education. Seven new
universities were established, including this
modern campus at Sussex, and the Colleges of
Advanced Technology were given university
status.

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The great comprehensive row ee Mh.

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OFF OUR
GRAMMAR

Even as the ink on the 1944 Education Act was drying and most
authorities were introducing a tripartite system of secondary education,
the London County Council was deciding to press ahead with a com-
prehensive scheme catering for all 11 to 18 year olds in similar schools.
Comprehensive education was already part of Labour Party policy, and
as early as 1943 the NUT conference resolved to support comprehensive
experiments too. But progress after the war was very slow. In 1950 there
were only 10 comprehensive schools in England and Wales; in 1958, 46,
and in 1960 still only 130. The Labour government gave the necessary
impetus to an already growing movement with the issue of the famous
circular 10/65 which asked local authorities for plans to change to
comprehensive secondary education. By 1967, there were 507 schools in
existence and hundreds were being planned, although some authorities
and groups of parents showed little enthusiasm for the change.

1. From the beginning there was opposition to
comprehensive schools from some parents.
These Bristol families, participants in a
particularly fierce battle with the local authority,
are marching to Hyde Park to protest.

2. Different local authorities found different
solutions to the problems of reorganisation.
Leicestershire pioneered a system of ‘high’ and
‘upper’ schools with a change of school at 14
for some children. Other authorities plumped
for the ‘middie’ schools suggested by the
Plowden report, and the West Riding of
Yorkshire opened the first Sixth Form College,
shown here, at Mexborough.

3. The LCC's first purpose built comprehensive
school was Kidbrooke, completed in 1954. It
housed 1700 girls and 90 teachers.

112

‘Make teaching your career’

The unprecedented expansion in the numbers of teachers needed led to
constant demands being made for the colleges to fit in more and yet more
students. The colleges responded by allowing larger numbers of students
to live in lodgings and by instituting some ‘Box and Cox’ courses
whereby one group of students studied in college buildings while another
was away on teaching practice, and vice versa. Special recruiting
campaigns dominated the early 1960s to attract more mature recruits,
especially to the technical colleges, and to persuade married women to
return to their careers. Part time teachers were encouraged and nursery
places made available for the children of teachers returning to the
profession. ‘ihe three year college course was at last instituted in 1960 and
expansion of student numbers continued, with numbers rising from less
than 16,000 a year in 1959 to nearly 39,000 a year in 1968. By the late
1960s both government and union officials showed some confidence that
the end of the teacher shortage was in sight, although forecasts vary as to
when it will ultimately arrive.

4. New buildings — here the City of Leicester
College - and new attitudes marked teacher

education in the 1960s. Many colleges became

coeducational for the first time during the rapid
expansion of student numbers.

5. Closed circuit television being used ina
school so that a group of students can watch a
lesson on number without disturbing the
children,

6. For some students the Robbins Report
proposal for a degree in education opened up
the possibility of a fourth year's study leading to
the examination for the Bachelor of Education
degree. This was another step towards the
NUT's Ideal of an all-graduate profession.

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The changing face of the schools

Where should we teach ? What should we teach ? How should we teach
it? These are the questions which have increasingly occupied the
profession for the last decade — a period which has seen an enormous
increase in research and experiment in the schools. Almost the entire
syllabus in the primary school has been subject to criticism and reform,
and in 1964 the Schools Council for the Curriculum and Examinations
was specifically set up to re-assess curricula, teaching methods and
examinations. The Nuffield Foundation has also sponsored wide-ranging
research projects in junior school language teaching and into the teaching
of science and mathematics. Contributions have also come from the
National Foundation for Educational Research, from the School
Mathematics Project and from researchers into the teaching of reading:
hardly an aspect of the school timetable has not been examined and where
necessary rethought. For many teachers in secondary schools the impetus
to rethink their subjects and teaching methods came from the
experimental approach of the Certificate of Secondary Education which
brought groups of teachers from different schools together to design their
own courses.

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1. A new dimension was added to lessons for
many children by educational television. The
Inner London Education Authority is one which
has set up its own etv service and trains
teachers to run it.

2. The initial teaching alphabet, developed by
Sir James Pitman, is one of several experimental
methods of teaching infants to read. Special
texts have been printed in it, and itis found to
help slow learners to read more easily.

3. Experiments with teaching machines, such as
these in use in a Surrey school, give some idea
of what the school of the future may be like.

4. Research into the design of primary schools
led ta the building of several experimental
schools ~ including this one in North London -
which were planned on the assumption that
modern group teaching methods did not need
small enclosed classrooms and that therefore
Spaces could be open-plan.

§. In some areas the teaching of immigrant
children has posed a problem. Special language
and reception classes have been started and
specialist teachers trained to teach the
immigrants English.

6. The increasing importance of mathematics
and science in a technological age has led to
major research efforts to improve their teaching
in secondary and primary schools. Modern
teaching methads indicate that quite young
children can grasp mathematical concepts
previously thought to be quite beyond them.

Teachers’ self help

Alongside the development of the National Union of Teachers, several
satellite organisations have sprung up, which have been of the greatest
significance to the profession, particularly in recent years. The Teachers’
Benevolent and Orphanage Funds, The Teachers’ Provident Society

and the Schoolmaster Publishing Company were early on the scene.
More recent times have seen the development of the Teachers’ Assurance
Company and the Teachers’ Building Society. A brief history of these

organisations is given here.

New Park, the Teachers’ Benevolent Fund
home for the aged.

The Teachers’ Benevolent Fund

The pioneers who founded the Union in 1870
soon realised that there would be a need for
organisation to provide self-help and support
for colleagues in distress. In the early
seventies successive conferences discussed
the formation of a benevolent fund and an
orphanage and orphan fund.

A resolution to establish a benevolent fund
was carried in 1875 and for an orphanage
fund, in 1876. The funds actually came into
being in 1877 and 1878 respectively.

The objects, laid down in the original draft
scheme, were to give temporary relief to
members fallen into distress or who had
suffered accidents or incapacity, to grant
temporary loans of up to £15, to make
gtants to widows and orphans and in special
cases to grant annuities to old or incapacitated
teachers.

The scheme envisaged that funds would be
raised by subscriptions and donations from
teachers and others, and from concerts,
entertainments and other charity functions.
In the early years the growth of the fund
5s slow. The first balance sheet showed an
of £79 and relief and loans totalling

has grown enormously since
e Teachers’ Benevolent Fund

now has an annual income from all sources
of £196,000. The fund maintains three homes
for elderly teachers and a fourth is to be
completed this year. It makes grants of more
than £65,000 a year to children and adults in
distress. About 3,000 applicants are dealt
with a year.

The four homes are Wayside, Sunderland;
Romaleyn, Paignton, South Devon; New
Park, Stoke-on-Trent and Elstree, Herts.,
the new home. In addition the fund would
like to set up a home in Wales. The fund also
runs a housing association the first of whose
projects was to build 41 self-contained flats
at Birmingham for 60 people.

The development of the Benevolent Fund
and the Orphanage and Orphan funds were
completely separate in the early days, though
the two funds shared administrative staff.
They were combined in 1899 into the
Benevolent and Orphanage Fund, and in
1967, the name was changed to the present
Teachers’ Benevolent Fund.

The Teachers’ Assurance

The Teachers’ Assurance is the Union’s own
insurance organisation comprised of the
Teachers’ Provident Society and the Teachers’
Assurance Company Ltd, commonly known
as the T.P.S. and T.A.C.

The Union has always been very conscious
of the personal welfare of its members and it

was only eight years after the formation of the
Union, that is in 1878, that the T.P.S. was
registcred as a Friendly Society to provide
Union members with sickness and_ life
assurance benefits on favourable terms.

As there have always been limitations to the
benefits that can be offered by a Friendly
Society, the Union and the T.P.S. decided
in 1936 to form the T.A.C. which, as an
insurance company, could offer to the
membership an even wider range of insurance
and house purchase facilities.

From 1936 until 1962 the T.P.S. and
T.A.C. operated virtually independently of
each other, but in 1962 it was felt that a
merging of their operations would prove
beneficial to the membership. Consequently,
such a merger took place and, although the
T.P.S. and T.A.C. still retain separate legal
identities, the entire insurance organisation
works under one Board of Management.

The Board of the Teachers’ Assurance is
comprised entirely of teacher members of
the NUT and includes two members of the
Union Executive to ensure close working
between the two bodies. Thus the Teachers’
Assurance is an organisation run by teachers
for teachers. The management officials have
however, had long experience in the world
of insurance and are fully aware of the
insurance problems and needs of the teaching
profession.

The Teachers’ Assurance thus offers a wide
range of insurance facilities on attractive
terms not only to members of the NUT and
associated bodies, but also to the husbands,
wives and children of such members.

The total invested funds of the organisation
are now approximately £24,000,000.

The organisation has wide local represen-
tation in the form of one or more Local
Secretaries in each NUT Association. Local
Secretaries are teachers and members of the
NUT and are only too anxious to be of
service to their colleagues. In addition, there
is a team of full time officials all fully
experienced in insurance matters who assist
the Local Secretaries in providing a personal
insurance service to the membership.

The Teachers’ Building Society

There has always been a tremendous demand
for mortgages for house purchase from
Union members and it has always been very
difficult for the T.P.S. and T.A.C. to meet
this demand. In an endeavour to extend the
facilities available for house purchase, the
Teachers’ Assurance, after consultations
with the NUT Executive investigated the
possibility of forming a building society.

Following these investigations, the
Teachers’ Building Society was launched in

December 1966 for the purpose of providing
building society investment facilities and
mortgages for Union members. The Society
met with immediate success and during the
first two years of its existence attracted
investment funds of approximately
£7,000,000 thus making a substantial sum
available for mortgages for Union members.

Such growth however, proved to be too
rapid, and in order to develop the Society
on sound lines the Directors found it necessary
to restrict the growth rate with effect from
January 1969. Nevertheless, the total

invested funds are now in excess of £7,500,000
and the Society is still able to assist members

with house purchase although on a much
more limited scale than in the first two years.

It will be seen that through its ancillary
organisations, the NUT provides a wide
range of insurance, investment and mortgage
facilities for its membership and must be
unique in union circles in having its own
friendly society, its own insurance company
and its own building society.

The Schoolmaster Publishing Company
On December 19, 1871, the Educational
Newspaper Company was founded, and in
the following year the first issues of The
Schoolmaster were published. The company,

though independent, was associated closely

with the Union, and the paper presented the
Union’s policy in forthright terms from the
earliest years.

In 1909 the company was taken over by
the Union and the Schoolmaster Publishing
Company was formed with Executive mem-
bers as the main shareholders. In January
1963 The Schoolmaster forsook its old
magazine style of presentation, and under
the new name of The Teacher was issued in
tabloid newspaper form. In April 1967 the
decision was taken to issue the paper to
every school in Britain free of charge. The
paper now prints more than 60,000 copies.

Battles and victories

Whatever government was in power the NUT’s battles for increased
salaries and status seemed to continue without much respite throughout
the 1950s and 1960s. In the early fifties pay negotiations were dominated
by the demands of women teachers for equal pay. And — this battle

won — 1961 saw a furious struggle against the economies introduced by
the government in the throes of a financial crisis. But the Union had
preoccupations apart from salaries. Between 1950 and 19§2 it conducted
a prolonged dispute with Durham County Council which was attempting
to enforce a “closed shop’ on all its employees. NUT members finally
handed in their resignations to Union officials in May 1952, supported by
other teachers’ unions and other professional associations involved. A
strike in the autumn term seemed inevitable until an arbitration board
decided in favour of the teachers and the County Council gave way. Less
successful was a prolonged Union campaign in the middle fifties against
the introduction of higher superannuation contributions for the teachers’
pension scheme. On the educational front the Union waged a ceaseless
publicity war to bring to the attention of the public the shortcomings of
the educational system — the overcrowded classes and the slum buildings —
which were contributing to a second class education for some children.

1. Oliver Whitfield, still a member of the NUT
executive, played a leading part in the bitter
dispute with the Durham County Council
between 1950 and 1952. He is seen here (left)
with Sir Ronald Gould, (right) and in the
centre Mr. Charles Darvill, chairman of the
Union's Law Committee

2. Equal pay was finally granted in 1955. It was
introduced in stages, bringing women teachers
salaries up to parity with their male colleagues’
by 1961.

3. The Burnham main committee in session with
Sir Ronald Gould and NUT representatives
facing the employers’ panel. Salary negotiations
continued to dominate Union affairs.

4. An attempt to cut the 1961 salary award by
£5 million caused a major dispute between the
Union and the government. This demonstration
outside Hamilton House made rank and file
views on Selwyn Lloyd, Chancellor of the
Exchequer at the time, quite clear

5. A special delegate conference at Central
Hall, Westminster, voted on strike action
during the 1961 dispute.

6. Not all members of the NUT were always
happy with the way the Union was being led.
Rank and file reaction to national negotiations
was Satirised by Giles in the Daily Express in
1961. 'However strangly we may feel about
Sir Ronald selling us down the river, Miss
Pummell..... ‘reads the caption.

Cut back

Economic crisis hit education again in the late 1960s and for the second
time in twenty years it became difficult to find money for the new
buildings and better facilities which the teachers had been pressing for.
Local authority budgets were pegged and in some areas this even led to
fears that some part-time teachers might lose their jobs and students
coming out of the colleges might have difficulty in finding employment.
The advertising campaign to encourage women to return to teaching when
their children were old enough was quietly terminated and some mature
entrants felt betrayed when fears of unemployment were publicly voiced
for the first time since before the war. A particular disappointment

was the deferment of the raising of the school leaving age — yet again —
this time until 1972. There were also bitter complaints that the
recommendations of the Plowden Report were not being implemented,
although the government did make special grants to assist schools in
deprived areas and to provide some extra nursery school places for
children most desperately in need.

Cut back again

1. With a cut back on part-time staft by some
local authorities making economies, the threat
of unemployment seemed more real than for
thirty years.

CAREERS |
MASTER |

2. The 1944 Act proposed more nursery schools,
the NUT has repeatedly called for them, and
now parents are either involving themselves in
‘do-it-yourself’ playgroups or joining in

protests like this one in London demanding
more school places for the under-fives.

3. A question mark hangs over the 15 year olds
who are still leaving school without any
guarantee of further education almost thirty
years after the Education Act recommended a
leaving age of 16.

4. For students in a period of cutback and
austerity there Is the fear that there may not be
jobs available when they are trained.

5. The legacy of the old schools, most recently went up over a century ago. In some schools
condemned by the Plowden report, still remains teachers face almost overwhelming odds in

a seemingly intractable problem. The surprise their struggle to educate yet another generation =
is merely that there is so much good education of children in conditions which were condemned

to be found behind grim, century-old schoot before the last war.
walls.

6. The overcrowded classroom is still with us
with desks crammed together In bulidings which

1970

So as it celebrated its centenary, the NUT
was still in the vanguard of educational
progress and still vigorously championing
the cause of the children of England and
Wales. It had come a long way since 1870.
All but two of the Union’s founders basic
aims — adequate salarics and control of
entrance to the profession-had been
achieved; and the establishment of a Teachers’
General Council, with control of entry, was
at Jast under serious discussion. Now there
were other aims to pursue. As the Union’s
prospectus described them, they included :—

The unity of all teachers (still apparently a
long way off) and the establishment of an
integrated system of education.

The establishment of a highly-qualificd,

publicly-recognised profession with emolu-
ments and other conditions of service
commensurate with the importance of the

profession to the nation.

A four-year education and training course
in Colleges of Education, under which the
normal qualification for recognition as a
teacher included a university degree, or the
successful completion of a degree equivalent
course.

Better conditions of tenure and service for
all teachers, safeguards against unjust dis-
missal, and greater freedom for the teacher.

Salaries of teachers should be related to
their qualifications, experience and res-
ponsibilities.

The basic objectives were twofold: to
secure improvements in the education of the
child and to achieve a higher status for the
profession.

At the end of 1969, there were almost
300,000 members of the Union in nearly 700
local associations. There was a thriving Young
Teacher movement. Apart from being con-
sidered as a major partner of the Department
of Education and Science, and education
authorities (although it was often in conflict
with both), it was represented on more than
100 national bodies, as well as actively in the
Schools Council, the CSE and GCE examining
boards, the National Foundation for Educa-
tional Research, university Councils and
Institutes of Education, and on many Ministry
study groups. It had an unparalleled legal
service for its members, the best Publicity
department in the education service, spon-
sored several MPs in the Commons, and
was the most respected educational union in

the world, as well as the biggest in Europe.
It operated the Schoolmaster Publishing
Company and its weekly newspaper, The
Teacher, the Teachers’ Benevolent Fund,
which was helping members or their relatives
to the tune of £200,000 a year. The Teachers’
Assurance, with funds of more than £24m,
and the Teachers’ Building Society.
The education service, in spite of the

repeated cycle of Stop and Go, could also
contemplate the centenary with satisfaction.
Several gaps, of course, were still blatant.
The NUT had exposed several of them in its
proposals for the new Act. There were others
that it overlooked. Thirty thousand students
of university potential were still leaving
school each year at 15. A surplus of teachers,
even on the 40/30 class size limits, which were
revoked in 1969, was not expected until 1978.
The problems of the EPAs still remained
largely untouched. Only about a quarter of all
secondary school children were still in school
at 16 (though the graph was rising steeply).
Only about 1§ per cent were going on to
higher education. In spite of the NUT’s
declaration that all classes should have a
maximum of 30 pupils, more than three
million children were being taught in oversize
classes. Young teachers were being paid a net
salary of only £13 a week, and the basic scale
sull amounted only to £860 to £1,600, against
the £1,000 to £2,000 which was the aim of the
NUT, and which the Conference rightly
described as ‘modest’.

Yet the progress had still been enormous.
British primary schools were the envy of the
world. More and more students were being
successful in the GCE and CSE, and it was
estimated that by 1980, 170,000 sixth form
students every year would be getting two
GCE Advanced levels. Student numbers at
universities and colleges had doubled in a
decade to nearly 400,000 and it was confidently
predicted that they would go up to at least
700,000 by 1980. A start at least had been
made on helping the EPAs. Thirty new
Polytechnics were being established. All but a
few education authorities had implemented or
prepared their plans for the switch to a
national system of comprehensive schools.
The eleven plus examination was on its way
out, though slowly. The school building
programme was reaching record levels, but
still mostly just to put roofs over heads. The
school-leaving age was being raised to 16 in
1972. Attention was at last being paid to
nursery education. More and more pupils
were staying on at school after 16. The
Colleges of Education were being given more
autonomy and it was expecied that a quarter
of their students would soon be staying on
for a fourth year to sit the Bachelor of
Education degree. Above all, there was an
unprecedented public interest in education.
All the national newspapers had accredited
education correspondents, and a few even
had two. And the budget for education had
reached a new peak of more than £2,000m,
or nearly six per cent of the gross national
product, and was exceeding spending on
defence for the first time in British history.

Another confident prediction, nevertheless,
was that the budget would need to grow to

Looking hopefully to the future at Kingsmead
Primary School, East London.

about £4,000m, and consume some cight
per cent of the gap by 1980 simply to stay
level with minimum demand; and on the eve
of 1970 it looked as though the immediate
preoccupation of the future was going to be
the problem of reconciling the growing
demand for education at all levels with a
national income that was increasing only by
about three per cent a year. The implications
that would face any Government, Labour or
Conservative, were outlined by Stuart
Maclure, perhaps the most distinguished
education writer of his generation, in his
farewell editorial in Education, journal of the
Association of Education Committees, before
he left to take up the editorship of The Times
Educational Supplement.

The more the education system grew, he
argued, the more the pressure would grow to
define the goals of the system, to decide what
spending was for and to argue about the
objectives to which this great engine of social
change was directed. The education system
had moved forward in the general direction of
mass education, but the rate of development,
and the proportion of money spent in the
different sectors of education, had been
determined not by planning but by organic
growth. Yet now, if priorities meant anything,
they meant ranking objectives in order, from
which it was a short step to measuring the
success of the system in terms of the objectives

and auditing its efficiency. To do this would
mean finding a way, within the English ideal
of distributed power, to translate general
aims into specific curriculum goals, without
lapsing into either despotic centralism or
anarchy. The content of the new debate
would be: The education system has already
got a lot of resources. Now it should make
up its mind about what it was trying to do,
how to do it, and how much of it to pay
from rates and taxes.

Another — distinguished Tyrrell
Burgess, was also prophesying the new
developments of the 1970s. The 1960s, he
argued, had been the decade when pupils,
teachers and parents came into their own to
assert their rights as partners in education
with politicians, administrators and ‘experts’.
They were also the era when higher education
became a national issue, and Burgess pro-
phesied that the eightcen plus, the Advanced
level examination determining university and
college entry, would eventually go the way of
the eleven plus. At first, he suggested, teachers
would show how ludicrous the selection
Procedures were and complain that the
demands for university entry distorted the
Schools’ curriculum. It would then be
accepted that A-levels did not represent
objective standards. After that, the anger of
Parents would make selection at 18 indefen-
sible.

As the last chapter indicated, the NUT
had anticipated the movement prophesied by
Burgess, and it looked as though its main
areas of attack at the start of its second

writer,

century were going to be the upper and lower
ends of the system: higher education and
nursery and primary education. Two areas
sull needed urgent attention, however. The
Union had still to become the main pressure
group and spokesman for secondary education.
Secondly, it had to decide whether it was a
professional association or a militant trade
union. Yet with its membership of nearly
300,000 and the record of its first hundred
years, it was undoubtedly the most powerful
and influential educational organisation, out-
side Government, in the land. A summing up
of its achievements is perhaps best left to
Dr Asher Tropp, author of The School
Teachers, who said in 1957:

‘Without any of the advantages of the older
professions, they have fought successfully
for the welfare of the schools and for an
increase in their status. They have shown how
it is profitable to the State, the teachers and
the children to enlarge the freedom of the
teacher and to make educational adminis-
tration a matter for joint consultation. They
have proved that through the activity of
professional associations it is possible to
reconcile the desires of the individual to fulfil
his professional conscience with the needs of
the State’.

Asher Tropp left his last words to Sir
George Kekewich, secretary of the Education
Department of the Government in the late
nineteenth century, who dedicated his auto-
biography to the NUT. Ir still remains
difficult to quarrel with his assessment. “They
have always fearlessly attacked all absurdities

The campain for higher salaries goes on.
Young teachers demonstrate outside parliament

in 1969.

of our education system’, he said, ‘have never
cringed before officialism, have stood for
progress, never for apathy or reaction, have
constantly and consistently used their power-
ful influence for the good of the child, as well
as of the teacher, and have been the mightiest
lever of educational reform’.

The new militancy

Teachers responded to the new era of austerity with an increased
militancy which led to constant clashes with the local authorities and the
government. Following a ballot of the membership the NUT launched
sanctions in selected areas during the 1967 salary dispute by withdrawing
its members from school meals duty, an area of long standing grievance
among teachers. Negotiations led to meals duty becoming voluntary

and in most areas ‘lay’ helpers were recruited to supervise school dining
halls during the lunch break. Dissatisfaction with salaries grew in the

era of wage restraint and the Prices and Incomes legislation and the 1969
conference in the Isle of Man was one of the most militant the Union

had seen for decades. It demanded substantial salary increases and by the
end of the year Burnham salary negotiations had broken down, thousands
of teachers had staged token strikes and the Union had called staff in
over 300 schools out on strike for two weeks — the NUT’s first ever
national stoppage. The new decade looked set to start for the teachers

in a mood of exceptionally determined militancy.

MORE
TEACHERS:

Lae “Th

u

1. The supervision of school meals during the
lunch break had become a focal point of teacher
unrest by the time it was used as a sanction in
the salary dispute of 1967.

2. A ballot on sanctions caused an immense
task for officials at Hamilton House who had to
count the votes and publish the results in the
summer of 1967.

—

-— = 3. The prolonged meetings of the Burnham
committee during 1967 were picketed by
teachers angry at the local authorities’ pay offer.

4. The next big salary dispute was in 1969 when
on one day in July a third of the schools in
London were forced to close after thousands of
teachers staged a half day strike to protest
about low salaries.

5. The 1969 conference at the Isle of Man set the
tone for a year of militant protests on the
salaries front.

6. Overwhelmingly in favour. Birmingham
teachers vote for further militant action in
December 1969.

CLASSES= id

vase EDUCATED

Twenty-six years on

Twenty-six years after the passing of the 1944 Education Act some of the
reforms that Act proposed are still not accomplished and question marks
still hang over large sectors of the education service. We have, indeed,
free secondary education for all, but the tripartite system and the

eleven plus lie largely discredited while their replacement, a fully
comprehensive system, is still in the throes of construction. The service
has seen enormous expansion, so large in the field of teacher training
that it is possible to foresee the end of the shortage of trained teachers
without being laughed too much to scorn. But the legacy of the past still
lies heavily in other fields, and especially in the primary schools which
were left with the worst of the school buildings when the secondary
schools were reorganised in the 1940s. Ramshackle buildings, antiquated
plumbing and large classes still make the education of the deprived
children in the ageing cities a sad and difficult business in spite of the
devotion of their teachers. So teachers continue to agitate and not only
for more pay but also for the capital expenditure which will make the
schools fit places for the young minds which have their one chance of
blossoming there. And one encouraging facet of the change which has
taken place in the 26 years is that increasingly the teachers find that they
are backed in their fight for a better education for all by the parents of the
children they are fighting for. Education is more and more in the
forefront of people’s minds and like the teachers, people want more of it,
and more of a better quality than ever before.

1. The 1944 Act wanted part-time education up
to the age of 18 - this and the county colleges in
which the students were to be taught are still

a dream.

2. Another dream unrealised is for nursery
schools for all the under-fives who want them.
But this is a field in which parental pressure is
growing and restrictions on building are being
lifted to some extent in the areas of greatest
need.

IBLIC

HOOLS
iMMISSION

3. A question mark still hangs over the public
schools, the subject of public and official debate
for decades. The proposals for integration of
the Fleming and Newsom reports still lie in
abeyance.

4. Questions, too, surround the future of
secondary schools as each local authority sets
up its own version of a comprehensive scheme.
Some seem determined to retain some form of
selection but in any case the complete
reorganisation of secondary education is a slow
process unlikely to be completed much before
the 1980s.

5. Another public debate centres around the
future of the religious clauses in the 1944 Act. Is
there any future for religious education in an
increasingly non-church gaing society which
now includes large non-Christian immigrant
groups with many children in the schools?

6. For young teachers and students and tentative

recruits to the profession this is a question still
to be asked. Just how much are teachers worth?

qj
AWD

Acknowledgements

Many officials and members of the National
Union of Teachers have contributed greatly
in the compiling of this book. They include
the Union’s Publicity Department,
especially Mr Bob Shepherd and Miss Toni
Griffiths, and the staff of the NUT Library,
particularly Miss Margaret Shaw and Miss
Janet Friedlander. Much initial research
was carried out by Mr Ernest Naisbitt,
formerly the Union’s Organising Secretary.
Sources of illustrations in Wales were
investigated by Mr Cynan L. Humphreys,
the NUT Regional Official for Wales, and
Mr Dillwyn Lewis, of the NUT Glamorgan
County Association.

The history of education in Bradford is
currently being written up by a.combined
team of teachers and others in the education
service, and the co-ordinating committee
kindly gave us the benefit of much of their
research.

The largest single source of illustrations is
the Radio Times Hulton Library.

Other sources:

National Union of Teachers p.§ p.6 p.7
p.18 (3) p.46 p.69 p.73 (3) p. 77 (3) p.78

(2, 3 and 4) p.79 p.81 p.82 (3 and 4)

Lhe Schoolmaster p.30 p.36 (1) p.37 (8)

p.39 (x)

The Mansell Collection p.12 (2) p.13 (4
and 5) p.14 (1) p.16 (2) p.17 (6) p.18 (2)
P.24 (1, 2 and 3) p.25 (4) p.44 (1) p.103 (4)
Cyril Bernard p.22 (2) p.33 (6) p.88 p.gt (4)
P.96 p.97 (2) p.98 (1) p.102 (1) p.104

(1 and 2) p.10§ (4 and 6) p.106 (2 and 3)
P.107 (4, 5 and 6) p.108 p.109

p.111 (4 and 6) p.113 (6) p.114 (1) p.115 p.116
p.12I (3, 4, § and 6) p.122 p.124 (2 and 3)
p.125 (5) p.126 (1 and 2) p.127 (4, § and 6)
Thomson Organisation (Topix) p.87 p.go
(1) p.91 (5) p.93 p.94 (2) p.98 (2) p.104 (3)
P.112 (1) p.114 (3) p.118 (3) p.119 (4 and 5)
p.120 (2) p.12q (1) p.127 (3)

Fox Photos p.70 p.73 (3) p.83 (6) p.85 (3 and 6)
P.102 (2 and 3) p.r13 (5)

Children 1773-1890 History at Source
Series by Robert Wood (Evans Brothers)
p.36 (4)

City of Leicester Museum p.23 (5)
National Library for Wales p.43 (3)
Birmingham Post p.125 (6)

International News Photo p.101 (4)
London News Agency Photos Ltd. p.74 (1)
Mr J. E. Dunn, Deerhurst, Gloucester

p.55 (3)

Castle Museum, York p.37 (5, 6 and 7)

Mr Dillwyn Lewis, p.42 (1) p.76 (5)
Department of Education and Science
(Education Office for Wales) p.43 (2)
British Museum Newspaper Library p.49 (3)

70.

: =

Sport and General Press Agency Ltd.

p.74 (2)

Keystone Press Agency Ltd. p.go (3)
p.100 (3) p.106 (1)

Carl Purcell p.94 (1)

Central Office of Information p.99 (5 and 6)
p.r10 (2 and 3) p.11I (5)

Richard Dykes p.99 (4)

Photomark Ltd. (Brighouse) p.112 (2)
Henry Grant p.113 (4)

The Press Association Ltd. p.114 (2) p.123
Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Ltd.
p.118 (1)

Cartoon by Dickinson in A Hundred of the
Best (Times Educational Supplement
Cartoons) edited by Nicholas Tucker
(Penguin) p.120 (1)

Daily Express p.119 (6)

Daily Telegraph p.125 (4)

Scarborough Publicity Department p.103 (6)
Bassano Ltd. p.74 (4)

Local Education Authorities

Oxfordshire County Council p.12 (1) p.3§
East Riding County Council p.34 (2)

West Riding County Council p.41 (3)
Greater London Council p.47 p.49 (2) p.50
(x and 2) p.§1 (5) p.52 p.53

County Borough of Sunderland p.74 (3, 4
and 5) p.76 (1 and 2) p.78 (1) p.82 (1 and 2)
p.83 (5)

County Borough of Great Yarmouth p.26 (4)
Derby County Council p.71 (3)

County Borough of Warrington p.68
County Borough of Bradford p.s9 p.60

p.61 p.62 (1 and 2) p.§0 (3) p.51 (4) p.57
Wiltshire County Council p.36 (3) p.49 (4)

Colleges and Universities

College of S. Mark and S. John p.2r
Bishop Otter College, Chichester p.39 (3)
Borough Road Training College p.39 (4)
East Warwickshire College of Further
Education p.7x (2)

University of Nottingham p.54

Elizabeth Gaskell College, Manchester
p.55 (1)

Acknowledgements are gratefully recorded
to the following authors:

Asher Tropp The School Teachers
Heinemann

Brian Simon Education and the Labour
Movenient 1870-1920 Lawrence and
Wishart

J. Stuart Maclure Educational Documents
Chapman and Hall

G. A. N. Lowndes The Silent Social
Revolution (Oxford University Press)
W.H. G. Armytage Four Hundred Years of
English Education (Cambridge University
Press)

Olive Banks Parity and Prestige in English

Secondary Education (Routledge)

S. J. Curtis and M. E. A. Boultwood
Introductory History of English Education
since 1800 (University Tutorial Press)
Faculty of Education, University of
Swansea Pioneers of Welsh Education

P. H. J. Godsden How They Were Taught
(Blackwell)

Malcolm Seabourne and Sir Gyles Isham
A Victorian Schoolmaster Northamptonshire
Record Society

Malcolm Seaborne Education (Studio Vista)
P. W. Musgrave Society and Education in
Engiand since 1800 (Education Paperbacks)
Gerald Bernbaum Social Change and the
Schools (Routledge and Kegan Paul)

H.C. Dent Education in Transition (Kegan
Paul)

H. C. Barnard History of English Education
(University of London Press)

E. R. Hamilton An Outline History of
Borough Road College

Tyrell Burgess A Guide to English Schools
(Pelican)

Walter Roy The Teachers’ Union
(Schoolmaster Publishing Company)
W.O. Lester Smith Education in Great
Britain (Oxford University Press)